
Class 






3^ 



Copyright N?. 



CQElfRlGHT DEPOam 



IMPROVING SCHOOLS 

BY 

STANDARDIZED TESTS 



SAMUEL sI'^ROOKS 

District Superintendent of Schools, Winchester, N.H. 
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF 

B. R.TBUCKINGHAM, PH.D. 

Director oj the Bureau of Educational Research 
Ohio State University 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO 






COPYRIGHT, 1922 

BY SAMUEL S. BROOKS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/.7^ 



Wbt S&i'ottii'Ot ^ttea 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 



OCT 13 '22 

©CiA683e62 



Atd I 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

This book divides itself naturally into two parts. The 
first part has to do with the situation in which Superin- 
tendent Brooks found himself, with his successful campaign 
in educating his teachers to use standardized tests, with 
the results which he obtained, with the way he used these 
results to grade his pupils, to rate his teachers, and to 
evaluate methods of teaching, and finally with the use he 
made of inteUigence tests. This is the first time, so far as 
I know; that a practical school man has, after planning 
carefully and executing to the last essential detail a large 
testing program, set down for the guidance of other prac- 
tical school men just what he did. 

We have waited a long time for this. The test-makers 
and technical research workers have been heard from exten- 
sively; and some of them have written for the benefit of 
teachers and supervising officials. Here, however, is one 
of their number who found unfavorable conditions in the 
district to which he had been assigned. He secured the 
support of his teachers in making a survey of these con- 
ditions by means of standardized tests. He gave the tests 
three times and made certain important uses of the results. 
Teachers, pupils, and parents were in favor of the tests 
as he used them. Moreover, he tells us just how he did 
these things; and he tells the story so clearly and so vividly 
that any one who reads his account will feel that he can 
do likewise. 

The second part of the book has to do with the changes 



IV EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

in methods of teaching which were brought about because 
of the knowledge gained from the tests. This is the best — 
is it not the only? — account of a testing program which has 
been carried through to its logical conclusion. It is the best 
answer I know to the question so often raised, *'What 
shall we do with the results of tests?" Nor is the answer 
conceived narrowly. It is not concerned with mere devices. 
It has a philosophy, and it is broad and fundamental. 
Definite methods are shown and shown in detail, but they 
are based on sound general principles. For example, he 
justifies his startling doctrine that the first reading in- 
struction should be in silent reading by the principles of 
association. Again, he introduces a plan of teaching chil- 
dren how to study because the tests measure the results of 
study and because if one wishes to improve the results of 
teaching as measured by tests, one must first improve 
methods of study. 

Even with reference to particular subjects the measures 
he has adopted and described are something more than 
expedients. Even here they are broadly conceived. In 
reading, for example, he recognizes a general principle ap- 
plicable to all subjects. The general principle is that in 
order to improve instruction in terms of test results, one 
must develop in the pupils the abilities which the tests 
measure — not other abilities, not even similar abilities, 
but the precise abilities which the tests measure as nearly 
as these can be ascertained. 

I am aware that there will be a few transcendentalists 
among research workers who at this point will cry out that 
neither Superintendent Brooks nor I know what the tests 
measure. These are the men whose daily occupation is 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION v 

straining at gnats and swallowing camels. It is well enough 
for them to do this among themselves, but some of them 
would hold up all progress while they split hairs over the 
setting up of a theoretically perfect *' criterion" and the 
devising of a test of highest possible correlation with it. 
This is good work, and I do not deprecate it. But the 
work of the schools must be done. Instruments of measure- 
ment must be used even if they are lacking somewhat in 
validity. 

At any rate, a practical man who thinks about silent 
reading readily concludes that rate and comprehension are 
the two items which ought to be measured and which the 
tests do apparently measure. He infers, therefore, that a 
method of teaching reading which is to develop the abil- 
ities measured by the tests must aim at these two objec- 
tives — rate and comprehension. This at least is Super- 
intendent Brooks's line of thought, and he pursues it with 
vigor and success. 

From the point of view of the expert in tests the author 
undoubtedly displays an uncritical acceptance of them. 
Fine statistical points are ignored; practice effects are for- 
gotten; validity is assumed; and reliabiHty is all but un- 
questioned. In short, the test-maker is accepted as hav- 
ing done his work. Some of us are sure that he is not en- 
titled to this degree of confidence; nor — to be entirely 
fair — does he think so himself. For the most part he is 
an experimentalist, trying one device after another, call- 
ing this a reading test and that an arithmetic test, with- 
out agreeing with his fellow test-makers as to what ability 
in either of these subjects may be. There is in this book an 
impressible object lesson for the test expert. From it he may 



vi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

see clearly how vital it is that he analyze the objectives in 
teaching and that he make his tests true measures of the 
extent to which the objectives are realized. It is clear that 
if school people are going to adopt the tests in the spirit 
displayed by Superintendent Brooks's teachers in chap- 
ter X, a burden of responsibility is laid upon the test- 
maker which he cannot evade. 

Again, there will be many practical teachers, principals, 
and supervising officials who will feel that there are many 
products of teaching which the tests fail to measure. These 
school men and women will point out that the abilities 
which are here exalted are of the more formal type. Yet 
it is entirely possible that the abilities which the tests 
directly measure are representatives of the higher abilities 
which the tests do not directly measure and which it is un- 
doubtedly the business of the school to inculcate. For 
example, rate and comprehension of reading, which the 
tests purport to measure directly, may fairly be said to 
condition the acquiring of more complex qualities having to 
do with taste, attitude, and appreciation — qualities which 
manifest themselves to an increasing degree as rate and 
comprehension of reading are developed. It may very well 
be that the better our pupils can read, add, and spell, or an- 
swer questions in language, geography, and history, the 
better they will manifest the qualities which are valuable 
in a social organism. Indeed, it can hardly be otherwise. 
These subjects are in the course of study by common con- 
sent; nor are the efforts of the curriculum makers, even of 
the most advanced type, directed toward their entire 
withdrawal. They are in the course of study because they 
are believed to serve the higher purposes of education. If 



EDITOR'S EsfTRODUCTION vii 

this is true, there is a case to be made out for teaching these 
subjects well, and for the belief that, within reasonable 
limits, the better they are taught, the more surely the 
broader purposes of education will be served. It will be 
time for the experts in high places and the conservatives in 
all places to criticize the author when they have accom- 
plished as much without tests as he has with them. 

To my mind chapters x to xv — constituting what I 
have called the second part of the book — are unique. 
Professor Cubberley has pointed out that because of the 
measurement movement, the whole subject of Educational 
Administration, in a decade or two, may need to be reor- 
ganized and books on the subject rewritten in terms of 
this new scientific development. The same statement 
may be made as to the subject of Methods of Teaching 
and as to books on that subject. Those methods will gain 
favor which produce measurable results. A method will 
not be taken for granted because some one high in author- 
ity favors it. In fact in these days no one high in authority 
will promulgate a method merely as his ipse dixit. Super- 
intendent Brooks has much to offer in these last chapters 
about method — methods of teaching reading in both pri- 
mary and upper grades, methods of handling the content 
subjects and of teaching children to study. But these 
methods are the immediate outgrowth of his testing pro- 
gram, and they are designed to improve the conditions 
which his testing program disclosed. They are methods 
which he has tried and the effects of which he gives us. 
They are therefore convincing. 

B. R. Buckingham 



PREFACE 

This book is written for superintendents, teachers, and all 
other persons interested in the use of educational tests and 
measurements as a means of improving the work of the 
schools. It tells how standardized tests and scales were 
used periodically for two years throughout an entire su- 
pervisory district, and how the results of the tests were put 
to practical use in classifying pupils into grades, for meas- 
uring the progress of pupils in their studies as a partial 
basis for promotion of pupils, for measuring the effi- 
ciency of teachers, for measuring the relative efficiency 
of special methods, and for motivating the work of both 
teachers and pupils. It also tells of remedial measures, 
in the way of modification of subject-matter and teaching 
methods, taken to improve unsatisfactory conditions re- 
vealed by the use of the tests. 

In its field, the book is unique in at least two respects: 
(i) it is a narration of actual experience rather than an ex- 
position of theory, and (2) it describes in detail how a com- 
prehensive, periodical testing program was planned and 
carried out, how the interested cooperation of the teachers 
was secured, and how the results of the tests were used to 
improve the schools. One whole chapter is devoted to what 
the teachers and pupils had to say, at the end of two years' 
use of the tests, as to how the tests were of help to them in 
their work. 

So far as the author is aware, all the books previously 



X PREFACE 

published on the subject of standardized tests and measure- 
ments deal almost entirely with the tests themselves; the 
need for them, descriptions and reproductions of them, 
and data concerning their derivation and standardization. 
Very little is said as to how the tests can be put to 
practical use in the schoolroom, and that little is usually 
expressed in very general terms. No book heretofore pub- 
lished describes in detail the putting of standardized tests 
to practical use in a concrete situation and periodically 
over a period of years. 

The above-mentioned books have proved very valuable 
in making the educational public acquainted with stand- 
ardized tests and their possibilities. But is it not time 
that we had something definite in book form as to how the 
tests are proving of value, or otherwise, in the hands of 
teachers and administrators? It was with the idea of 
starting something in this line that the author has set 
down in this book his own experiences with standardized 
tests as an aid in school supei*vision. The book does not 
claim to settle any of the great problems of modern edu- 
cation. It merely tells how standardized tests were used in 
an attempt to solve some of the more pressing of these 
problems as they appeared. In it we tell what we did, why 
and how we did it, and the results obtained. We have 
tried to tell it in such a way that any one who so desires 
may easily follow the general plan with modifications, if 
necessary, to fit his own particular field of endeavor. It 
is hoped that the book may prove both interesting and help- 
ful to our fellow workers, and that it may give at least a 
little added momentum to the great movement toward ob- 
jective measurement of ''classroom products.'' If it ac- 



PREFACE XI 

complishes these objects, even in a small measure, the au- 
thor will feel amply repaid for the time and labor involved 
in presenting his experiences for publication. 

It is with pleasure and gratitude that the author here ac- 
knowledges his indebtedness to Dr. B. R. Buckingham for 
kindly advice and encouragement during the preparation 
of the work, for many helpful suggestions, for his sympa- 
thetic editing of the manuscript, and finally, for the Editor's 
Introduction. 

S. S. Brooks 
Winchester, N.H., Jtdy^ 1922 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I. Introduction . i 

Chapter 11. The Practical Situation . . . ,. . . 8 
Sizing-up the situation — Analyzing the situation. 

Chapter III. Getting Teachers to Feel the Need eor 
Standardized Tests . . . i6 

The first meeting — The second meeting — The third meeting 

— The fourth meeting. 

Chapter IV. Using Standardized Tests for Grading Pur- 
poses 30 

Supervising the testing — Converting scores into grades — 
Devising a graph card — The meaning of the graph card — 
Grading the pupils. 

Chapter V. Conditions Revealed by the Use of Standard- 
ized Tests 39 

The graph cards described — Tendencies shown by the graphs 

— The search for causes; over-emphasis on arithmetic — Other 
tendencies — The writing situation — Poor results in reading, 
and why — A new policy as to reading. 

Chapter VI. Measuring the Progress of Pupils by Means 
. OF Standardized Tests 52 

Teachers' judgments of progress unsatisfactory — Standardized 
tests used to measure progress — The graph card — The record 
of a child of average mentality — The record of a bright child — 
The record of a dull child — The record of a class. 

Chapter VII. Measuring the Efficiency of Teachers 
BY Standardized Tests 69 

Factors in teaching ability — Measuring teaching efficiency by 
results — Objections of teachers to rating by results — The 
objections answered — The plan of rating teaching — First illus- 
tration of the plan — Second illustration of the plan — Salary 
and rating. 



xiv CONTENTS 

Chapter VIII. Comparing the Efficiency of Special 
Teaching Methods by Means of Standardized Tests . 82 

The teacher and the method — Eliminating the variables — Two 
ways of comparing methods; the first case illustrated — An ex- 
periment in comparing methods — The second case: comparing 
methods when used by the same teacher — A suggested plan of 
procedure — Need of testing methods by results. 

Chapter IX. Some Uses for Intelligence Tests ... 96 

Practical notes for practical purposes — Intelligence tests needed 
in school: faulty judgments of teachers — The fallacy that all 
pupils can make satisfactory progress — The Binet-Simon Intel- 
ligence Scale — Group tests of intelligence — Our original pur- 
pose to locate the mentally defective — The Otis Test — The 
Haggerty Tests — A case in which intelligence testing helped — 
Another case — A menace — Border-line cases — Intelligence 
tests used in rating teachers — Identifying the bright pupils 

— Special opportunities in city systems — Intelligence tests 
for grading purposes — The small range of mental ages in each 
grade — Mental ages of pupils in each grade — Grading by 
mental and achievement tests substantially the same — A pro- 
posed plan of grading in a rural school. 

Chapter X. Reaction of Teachers and Pupils to Stand- ">• 
ardized Tests 124 

What the teachers think of the tests — What the pupils think of 
i the tests. 

Chapter XI. Reading Aims and Methods 143 

Modification of methods and materials is part of a testing pro- 
gram — Drill in oral reading does not ensure silent-reading abil- 
ity — The way to improve silent reading is to teach silent read- 
ing — Oral-reading drill hinders good reading — The case against 
oral reading — Yet oral reading has its value — Oral reading not 
necessary for beginners — When to begin to teach oral reading 

— Why silent reading should be taught first — Silent reading as 
actually taught — Merely giving children books to read is not 
sufl&cient. 

Chapter XII. Silent Reading in the Lower Grades . .159 

Must develop the kind of ability the tests measure — The success 
of the plan adopted — Reading in first grade — Teaching the 
first words — Keeping the right order of association — Teaching 



CONTENTS XV 

sentences — The use of pictures — Reading from books — Little 
good material available — An example of usable material — One 
way of using such material — A second method — A third method 

— Second readers begin in the last half of the first year — The 
result in one school — The kind of material needed for first-grade . 
use — Reading in the second grade — Reading in the third grade. 

Chapter XIII. Reading in the Upper Grades . . .193 

Reading as a separate subject should not be necessary in the upper 
grades — Local conditions required vigorous action — The plan 

— Character of the reading material — The books mentioned are 
merely suggestive — Why literature is not adapted for silent- 
reading drill — The kind of material needed for silent reading. 
Examples of good selections for silent reading — Ways of using 
silent-reading material. 

Chapter XIV. Teaching Children How to Study . . 234 

Children do not know how to study — Children must be taught 
to study — Poor methods prevail — Situations which favor good 
study habits must be provided — Good silent-reading ability 
essential to study — Good silent-reading methods encourage 
good study habits — Some examples — Habits thus developed 
carry over into other work. 

Chapter XV. Supervised Study 246 

> Three types of activity in "studying" — Difficulties in connec- 
tion with supervised study — Silent-reading drill offers an oppor- 
tunity for supervised study — The question method is especially 
advantageous — The method illustrated — Alternating super- 
vised study and recitation — Another way of conducting super- 
vised study — Finding the topic of a paragraph — Construction 
of outlines — Collecting material as a phase of study. 

Index •••..•• 275 



LIST OF TABLES 

Table I Distribution of the Ratings of a Sixth-Grade 
Arithmetic Paper 17 

Table II. Distribution of the Ratings of an Eighth- 
Grade History Paper 18 

Table III. Weights assigned to Twelve History Ques- 
tions ACCORDING TO TeACHERS' JUDGMENTS . . . .22 

Table IV. Rank of History Questions in Difficulty based 
ON Number of Times missed 24 

Table V. Summary of Ranks and Values for Each of 
Twelve History Questions 25 

Table VI. Record of L. D 35 

Table VII. June Scores of a Fifth Grade in Reading . 75 

Table VIII. Grade per cents on Each Test — Teacher A 76 

Table IX. Grade per cents on Each Test — Teacher B . 77 

Table X. Grade per cents on Each Test — Teacher C . 78 

Table XI. Grade per cents on Each Test — Teacher D . 79 

Table XII. Average Scores in the Woody Scales . . 89 

Table XIIL Comparison of Mental and Chronological 
Ages of Sixth-Grade Pupils, Tamworth Schools . .115 

Table XIV. Mental Ages of Pupils in Each Grade . .117 

Table XV. Results of Mental Tests in a Selected School 120 

Table XVI. Pupils with Mental Ages below Eight 
Years . 120 

Table XVII. Pupils with Mental Ages between Eight 
AND Nine 121 

Table XVIII. Pupils with Mental Ages between Nine 
AND Ten 121 

Table XIX. Pupils with Mental Ages between Ten and 
Eleven 122 



IMPROVING SCHOOLS BY 
STANDARDIZED TESTS 






CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

Education Is gradually becoming less of a custom and 
more of a science. A force of professionally trained edu- 
cators, imbued with a determination to free the schools 
from the chains of mediaeval traditions in subject-matter 
and method, and with an ambition to apply the principles 
of common sense to education, is being rapidly built up. 
The development of modern educational psychology is 
bringing about changes of management and method that 
are little short of revolutionary. The ossifying doctrine 
of formal discipline and a multitude of other hoary tradi- 
tions have been proved invalid by the scientifically con- 
trolled experiments of experts in the psychology of learn- 
ing. Thus the very foundations have been knocked from 
under the existing educational system, leaving it, so to 
speak, very much up in the air. 

But if these experts were to be anything more than 
iconoclasts, they must furnish something better in the 
way of teaching aims and methods to replace the demol- 
ished idols of an educational world whose complacency 
they had sadly ruffled. Accordingly, they inaugurated in 
some quarters experimental schools and school systems — 
laboratories for the compounding of educational doctrines. 
While still very young, however, the new movement be- 
came seriously afflicted with a rash of faddism due to 



2 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

under-trained but over-enthusiastic reformers who mis- 
took their day-dreams for facts of proved worth. Having 
passed through this period, however, the movement 
began to steady itself. Earnest seekers after the truth 
early came to realize that to foist half-baked schemes on 
an ultra-conservative public would in the end merely 
breed distrust and suspicion of all new ideas in education 
regardless of their value. Reformers grew more cautious 
of presenting their ideas until they had proved their 
worth. Local school men and women also became more 
cautious of introducing new methods until those methods 
had been successfully tried out under fairly representa- 
tive conditions. Thus something like a healthy balance 
was struck between faddism and conservatism. 

Among the more recent ideas there are some that seem 
pregnant with tremendous possibilities for the improve- 
ment of educational procedure. The most far-reaching 
in its beneficial possibilities seems to me to be the idea of 
measuring the results of teaching and the intelligence of 
school children by means of standardized tests. Of large 
importance also are: " The Socialized Recitation/* 
" Supervised Study," " Teaching Children How to 
Study," "The Project-Problem Method in Teaching," 
and the change of emphasis from oral to silent reading. 
All these things are rich with promise of greater efficiency 
in education. But although all the above-mentioned 
ideas have proved successful, when carried out by trained 
men and women full of enthusiasm and thoroughly under- 
standing the psychological principles upon which the ideas 
were based, nevertheless, when the carrying-out of these 
same ideas has been attempted by persons lacking in 
sympathy and full understanding of the principles, aims, 
and methods involved, they have often been far from 
successful. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

Superintendents and teachers who condemn these ideas, 
after proving to their own satisfaction that they are worth- 
less, remind me of the first farmer in the town of my boy- 
hood to purchase a mowing machine. For a great many 
years this man had mowed his many rough and rather 
rocky acres by hand with the help of a large crew of hired 
men. But one spring the mowing-machine agent appeared 
in our town and as a result, by the time hay was ready to 
be cut, the farmer found himself possessed of a brand-new 
mowing machine, resplendent in green, yellow, and red. 
The next morning he started out to mow the " back field." 
Truly his trials that day were many. And when the 
machine, unable to stand any more of his inexpert han- 
dling, broke down late in the afternoon, he had succeeded 
in getting over only about as much ground as one good 
man with scythe and snath could have mowed in the same 
length of time. And what an untidy-looking job it was! 
The next day the farmer started his old crew to mowing 
by hand. No more of that mowing machine for him. He 
could do more and better work in a day alone than could 
a man with a pair of horses and a mowing machine. The 
mowing machine was a failure. He knew because he had 
tried it. But did this farmer's experience with his new 
mowing machine prove the failure of the machine or the 
failure of the man? The mowing machine, we know, will 
do good and rapid work in astonishingly rough and rocky 
ground when guided by a practiced hand. 

And so it is with new methods and ideas in education. 
The sociaHzed recitation can easily result in chaos in the 
hands of weak teachers. Supervised study can become 
the sepulcher of all energy and initiative on the part of 
pupils if improperly conducted. Teaching children how 
to study becomes a farce when attempted by teachers who 
do not themselves know, how to study efficiently. And 



4 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

how many of them do know how to study to the best 
advantage? As for silent-reading — well, some of its 
ardent exponents would get the surprise of their lives if 
they sent out questionnaires to all the teachers of so-called 
silent-reading asking them to explain their conception of 
silent-reading drill. 

For example, I visited a village school not long ago, 
where, the superintendent told me, one of his best teachers 
was working out some of the " new ideas." I found the 
teacher industriously correcting papers at her desk. The 
room was very quiet and orderly, and every child was busy. 

"Do you teach silent-reading here?" I asked, after 
introducing myself. 

" Oh, yes! That is what we are doing now. We have 
silent-reading drill for a whole hour every afternoon." 

" And is that all the silent-reading drill they get? " 

She looked up in surprise. " Why, yes, that seems to 
be as much time as we can spare without neglecting the 
other work. The pupils enjoy it very much," she added. 

And why should n't they enjoy it? The school was well 
supplied with children's story-books and for a whole hour 
every afternoon the pupils were permitted to forget the 
serious affairs of life and to dawdle over story-books with- 
out aim or purpose. Was this efficient silent-reading 
drill, or was it largely a waste of time and money? 

Now the moral of all this is that neither a machine nor 
an educational method should be condemned as worthless 
because it fails in unpracticed hands. The successful 
working-out of any of the things mentioned above (espe- 
cially in the present state of our knowledge about them) 
demands energy, initiative, industry, enthusiasm, and a 
fairly complete understanding of the psychological princi- 
ples involved together with ability to apply them. The 
form of a method without its spirit will not ensure success 



INTRODUCTION 5 

Before introducing a new mode of procedure into a 
school or school system, superintendents and teachers 
should be sure that they know what they are going to try 
to do, why they are going to try to do it, and what others 
have done along the same line. In addition they should 
have a definite plan as to how they expect to do it. This 
plan may have to be changed or modified several times 
before results are satisfactory, but nevertheless, some 
definite plan should be provided at the start. 

For information as to what others have done one must 
have recourse to educational books and periodicals. 
Much has been written, in one form or another, concerning 
supervised study, teaching children how to study, silent- 
reading, and standardized tests. Most of these writings, 
however, deal with generalities. Now, either through 
lack of inherent ability or through lack of proper training, 
it is undoubtedly hard for most people to apply general 
principles to specific cases; to take a suggested plan, think 
out the details, and put the plan into successful operation. 
This is the reason for such a large crop of failures when a 
superintendent calls his teachers together, tells them what 
he wants done, explains the general principles of the new 
plan, and leaves them to w^ork out the details and produce 
results. 

The research men are giving us some splendid books as a 
result of their years of study and painstaking experiment. 
Their statements of procedure are, for the most part, 
sound in theory; and many of them have been proved by 
practice — especially when conditions were favorable. 
But these general principles, when applied under widely 
different and often adverse conditions, do not always work 
well. There are, however, some school people who are 
not easily discouraged, who take the trouble to make a 
careful study of the causes of failure, and who modify 



6 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

either the plan or the local conditions or both ; and it is they 
who put the results of research into successful operation. 

Would it not, therefore, be well if we had more printed 
records direct from the actual workers in the field — from 
the men and women at the head of local schools and school 
systems and from their teachers? Even if these records 
were not of high technical or literary merit, they would 
tell just what teachers and superintendents have tried to 
do, and why and how they have tried to do it, together 
with the results achieved. The story might not always be 
one of shining success, but could it not be valuable to 
fellow workers for all that? If we are truly wise, we may 
often learn success from others' failures. Most of us 
profit by reading about the experiences of others in our 
own line of work, even though we are sometimes foolish 
enough to think we have nothing more to learn. 

Hence the excuse for this book. It tries to tell in a 
simple way how standardized tests and scales were used 
to improve the schools in a newly organized rural-school 
district in New Hampshire under conditions that were, to 
say the least, discouraging. In a way it is story. It is 
the story of how a corps of faithful, hard-working, but 
mostly untrained teachers, with the aid of an inexperienced 
superintendent, put standardized tests and measurements 
to practical use throughout a school system to the con- 
siderable advantage of all concerned; of how also, in con- 
nection with the use of the tests, they solved, with at 
least some satisfaction to themselves, the problems of 
efficient silent-reading drill, supervised study, and teach- 
ing children how to study, in one-teacher rural schools. 
It is not a story of complete and unqualified success; but 
I have endeavored to make it a faithful, readable, and 
understandable account of what was done, of why and 
how it was done, and of the results achieved. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

The book is addressed to teachers and superintendents, 
both urban and rural. The principles of procedure set 
forth can be applied in a single school or a whole school 
district, in large schools or small, in city or country. The 
methods used have been tried out under about as unfavor- 
able conditions as could be found anywhere. Although 
the actual experiments have been carried on in a purely 
rural district, I can conceive of no reason why the same 
principles cannot be applied with even greater facility, 
and the methods used to even greater advantage in town 
and city schools. Many of the obstacles that face the 
rural superintendent in attempting such a testing program 
as is here described are largely absent in the city. Better- 
trained teachers are available; the teaching force is more 
stable; and it is much easier to get the teachers together 
for frequent meetings. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PRACTICAL SITUATION 

A SUPERVISORY district containing twenty-six rural, un- 
graded one-room schools with teachers for the most part 
inexperienced or untrained, a majority of whom had never 
worked under a superintendent before — this was the 
opportunity that fell to my lot when I became a New 
Hampshire superintendent under the new law effective 
September i, 1919. It was my first experience as a super- 
intendent. Truly the district was " virgin soil " as a 
member of the State Department remarked to me when 
I took the position. 

SiziNG-up THE Situation 

The first two or three weeks were spent in traveling about 
the district getting acquainted with the teachers and 
sizing-up the situation. Most of the schools had already 
begun, the teachers having been hired by the local school 
boards as in the past. I found that three of the teachers 
were normal-school graduates, and that two had attended 
one summer school; but the others had no professional 
training whatever. Several had not attended school 
beyond the eighth grade, but had taught from ten to 
twenty-eight years in the same school. Three were in- 
experienced high-school graduates in their teens. Fifty 
per cent of all the teachers had never seen a professional 
book or magazine and did not know where to obtain one. 
All this, of course, had resulted in an ingrowing provin- 
cialism which could not but have a disastrously narrowing 
effect on their teaching. They were imitators of imitators. 



THE PRACTICAL SITUATION 9 

Their methods were in imitation of the teachers who had 
taught them and who, in their turn, had imitated their 
own teachers. The results were the use of methods and 
texts so archaic as to be amusing if they had not been at 
the same time such a sad commentary on our boasted 
educational system. 

Most of the textbooks were sadly out of date. Arithme- 
tics, geographies, grammars, and even histories published 
in the eighties were in daily use. One of the local com- 
mittees insisted that they must be good books or they 
would not have worn so long. Of course the books were 
all based on the defunct doctrine of formal discipline and 
showed little of the psychological methods of presenting 
material which are the basis of modern educational pro- 
cedure. The idea seemed to be that an arithmetic is an 
arithmetic, and that a geography is a geography, one book 
being as good as another so long as nothing pertaining to 
the subject is omitted and the leaves are all present. 

I have emphasized the teaching and textbook situations 
because I consider them the most important factors. 
I shall mention a few other points briefly. As for the 
schoolhouses, it is sufficient to say that most of them were 
typical New England rural-school buildings of ancient 
vintage, modeled variously (according to the ideas of their 
instigators), upon churches, town halls, barns, and in some 
cases it would almost seem, upon pigpens. They were 
small, dirty, poorly heated, lighted, and ventilated, and in 
short generally unsanitary and ill-suited to their purpose. 
As to the organization of the schools, as I have already 
intimated, no attempt had ever been made to grade them. 
Another important factor in the situation was the attitude 
of the communities toward expert supervision. Three of 
the four towns in the district had always opposed such 
supervision as long as it was optional and were not in- 



lo STANDARDIZED TESTS 

clined to submit gracefully when, according to the pro- 
visions of the new law, it became compulsory. Such were 
the general conditions as revealed by my preliminary 
survey. 

However, there were th^^ee bright spots in the general 
darkness of the situation. First, the splendid new State 
school law which made the superintendent a State ofl&cial 
with a pretty free hand and which provided liberal State 
aid for rural schools, where it might be necessary, to keep 
them up to the required minimum standards. Secondly, 
intelligent school boards willing to cooperate. And last, 
my own professional equipment which included a pretty 
thorough training in educational measurements and an 
earlier experience in the teaching of rural schools. Ac- 
cordingly, I tackled the proposition determined to show 
what scientific method in education, as I understood it, 
could do for rural schools if it had the chance. 

Analyzing the Situation 

The following week was spent in analyzing the conditions 
found to exist and in deciding upon the most efficient way 
to bring order out of chaos. As a result of this analysis a 
number of definite problems seemed to stand out clearly 
demanding early attention. From among these problems 
I shall select, for present discussion, only those, in the 
solution of which, as it seemed to me, standardized tests 
and scales could be used to good advantage. 

Problem i. To grade the schools fairly and accurately. 
Getting the schools graded in order to start the pupils 
right for their year's work was of course the most urgent 
problem. It would have been a comparatively simple 
matter to grade them arbitrarily on the basis of the teachers' 
judgments. But there are serious objections to this 
method even as a beginning, especially when the teacher 



THE PRACTICAL SITUATION ii 

is new to the school. If, for example, children are placed 
in grades lower than their parents think they ought to be, 
there are bound to be strenuous objections from some of 
these parents, and the only evidence one has to offer is that 
the teacher thought the children ought to be placed in 
those grades. Did you never hear this line of talk from 
an irate parent? " My John is just as smart as Mrs. 
Smith's Henry and he ought to be in the same class or 
above. It's a plain case of showing partiality. I just 
won't stand it!" 

It is not by any means easy in such cases to prove to the 
satisfaction of the parent that the teacher had a sound 
basis for her judgment. And the fact is that she did not 
have a sound basis. How did she know just what knowl- 
edge or ability a child should exhibit in order to belong in a 
certain grade? What standards of achievement did she 
have for the different grades besides her own arbitrary 
judgment? 

Giving ordinary tests for grading purposes is also in- 
accurate and unfair, because such tests are devised by the 
teacher or superintendent and hence represent merely the 
judgment of one of them as to what he or she thinks a 
child ought to know in order to be placed in a certain grade. 

Worse than all else, the children themselves are apt to 
become discouraged, not understanding wherein they have 
failed, and being at a loss as to just what they are expected 
to achieve. Even the superintendent and teachers, if 
they are conscientious, are not satisfied because they can- 
not feel sure that injustice has not been done. Retarding 
a child without good reason, thus robbing him of a year of 
his time, is a serious matter, at least for the child. 

What method of grading, then, could be found which 
would be fair to all concerned? After casting about for 
some time for a solution to this problem, it suddenly oc- 



12 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

curred to me that standardized tests would help me out of 
my difficulty. Did they not offer definite standards of 
achievement for each grade? And those standards were 
not based on an unattainable one hundred per cent nor 
upon the opinions of dogmatic educators as to what a child 
ought to know at the end of a certain grade. They were 
experimentally derived and based upon the amount of 
work that normal children are actually doing in the differ- 
ent grades throughout the whole country and not upon 
the amount of work somebody thinks they ought to do. 

By giving these tests in all my schools I thought I could 
determine just where each child belonged on the educa- 
tional ladder. The process would be roughly comparable 
to measuring a large number of sticks of various lengths 
by means of a tape measure sorting them into eight piles, 
each pile containing sticks of about the same length. 
Then, when angry parents wanted to know wh}^ their 
children were graded so low, I could show them. The 
children themselves could be made to see wherein they had 
fallen below standard and what they would have to do 
to come up to the standard. Both superintendent and 
teachers would feel that they were on solid ground. Surely 
I needed standardized tests the first thing. 

Having reached this conclusion, I immediately ordered 
all the tests and scales I knew of that were sufficiently well 
standardized for my purpose. They covered the following 
subjects: arithmetic, silent and oral reading, spelling, 
writing, geography, history, and English language.-^ 

Problem 2. How to measure the progress of pupils. 
Having settled upon how to do the preliminary grading, 

1 For those who do not know standardized tests and want to get acquainted, 
I recommend for a beginning the purchase of Measuring the Results of Teaching by 
Monroe, and Educational Tests and Measurements by Monroe, De Voss, and Kelly. 
Both books describe the best tests and their uses and the former tells where to 
obtain them. These books are published by Houghton Miffin Company. 



THE PRACTICAL SITUATION 13 

the next problem was to find a just method of measuring 
the progress of pupils for promotion purposes. The same 
objections to teachers' tests hold good here as were noted 
in discussing the previous problem. 

This problem involved, obviously, the finding of a 
satisfactory system of marking. It has been proved be- 
yond doubt that ordinary teachers' marks are unfair, 
inaccurate, and generally unsatisfactory as a means of 
measuring progress or as a basis for promotion. 

In measuring the progress of pupils, standardized tests 
must surely find their widest field of usefulness. Here the 
process can be compared to standing a ten-foot measuring 
rod beside a young tree when it is a foot high and noting 
its growth in height. When it has added another twelve 
inches it belongs in the two-foot class. Twelve inches 
more and it is promoted to the three-foot class, and so on. 
It is entirely possible to dexdse a satisfactory system of 
marking, with the aid of such tests, as will be explained 
later on. 

Some of the teachers thought that the new State pro- 
gram of studies for elementary schools would be a sufficient 
guide for promotion purposes. This program is thoroughly 
practical and up-to-date. But it offers no definite, ob- 
jective standards of achievement from grade to grade. 
Therefore it is not a satisfactory tool with which to meas- 
ure the progress of pupils and to determine when they are 
ready for promotion. It is true that a printed program 
of studies specifies the subject-matter to be covered by 
each grade, but it is left entirely to the judgment of the 
teacher as to when that subject-matter is covered satis- 
factorily. The ground may be gone over more or less 
thoroughly and with very unequal results according to 
the methods and arbitrary standards of the individual 
teacher. Hence, it is obvious that programs of study 



14 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

cannot take the place of standardized tests that are even 
fairly objective. 

Problem 3. How to measure the ability of teachers. 
One of the greatest needs of superintendents is a method 
of measuring the ability of teachers that will be accurate 
and fair to all concerned — a method that will not leave 
the superintendent open to the charge of favoritism or poor 
judgment — a method that will satisfy a teacher who has 
been rated something less than " excellent '' that her 
shortcomings are real and not hallucinations in the mind 
of the superintendent due to his personal dislikes and 
prejudices. 

What is wanted is concrete evidence of a teacher's 
ability or lack of ability that will allay carping criticism 
from whatever source. It is decidedly neither accurate 
nor fair to estimate a teacher's ability solely by observa- 
tion made by the superintendent dining his visits to the 
classroom. It is not fair because (a) such observations 
do not furnish a sound basis for judgment; (b) the superin- 
tendent's opinions are quite apt to be colored by personal 
prejudices toward an individual teacher or her methods; 
(c) classes often show at their worst in the presence of 
visitors; (d) even the teacher may fail to do herself justice 
xmder the critical eye of the superintendent. It is inac- 
curate for all the reasons noted above and because (a) 
some teachers do excellent work when the superintendent 
is present and shirk all the rest of the time, and (b) if such 
teachers do their own testing, even the results may be 
made falsely to appear satisfactory. 

Provided a teacher is of good moral character with high 
ideals and a fairly pleasant personality, her further de- 
sirability as a teacher is measured by the results she gets 
as determined by the progress of the pupils when such 
progress is objectively measured. After all, it is results 



THE PRACTICAL SITUATION 15 

we are after, primarily. Hence, the standardized tests 
measure objectively both the progress of the pupils and the 
ability of the teacher at one and the same time. 

Problem 4. To find a practical method of supervising 
study and of teaching how to study. This may seem like a 
large contract for the one-teacher rural school with its 
crowded curriculum, but I shall try to show that it can be 
successfully worked out by using proper methods of study 
supplemented by judicious use of the standardized educa- 
tional tests and measurements. 

This chapter merely presents some of the problems con- 
fronting me in my new work together with some plans 
for their solution and reasons therefor. The following 
chapters will describe in detail the working-out of these 
plans and the results achieved. 



CHAPTER III 

GETTING TEACHERS TO FEEL THE NEED 
FOR STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Having concluded that standardized tests would greatty 
help me under the conditions set forth in the preceding 
chapter, I next attacked the problem of securing the whole- 
hearted cooperation of my teachers in their use. The 
psychology of interest teaches us that a person's best 
efforts are called forth only when he feels a real need. So 
I set myself to arouse in my teachers an enthusiastic 
interest by bringing them to feel a real need for definite 
standards of accomplishment in school work. In order to 
make them feel this need deeply, something more than 
merely telling them of the tests and their uses was neces- 
sary. They must be made to realize the inadequacy of 
ordinary methods of measuring the results of teaching. 

Accordingly, I called a series of teachers' meetings on 
four consecutive Saturday afternoons. In a district more 
than twenty miles square it is not easy to get all the 
teachers together at one place. I succeeded, however, in 
persuading two automobile owners in each town to take 
the teachers to these four meetings at a price that would 
little more than pay for the gasoline consumed. Whether 
or not this scheme could be worked in other districts would 
depend, of course, on the character of the automobile 
owners and the success of the superintendent in convincing 
them that they ought to be willing to do it in an emergency 
and for the welfare of the schools. 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 17 

The First Meeting 

At the first meeting I outlined briefly what I wanted to do 
and why, and then suggested that v/e try some practical 
experiments. The first experiment was intended to prove 
the inaccuracy of teachers' marks in general. A few days 
before, I had selected the paper turned in by a sixth-grade 
pupil in a regular arithmetic test given by one of the 
teachers. This test contained the usual ten problems and 
was supposed to measure knowledge of percentage. A 
hektographed copy of the pupil's paper was given out to 
each of the twenty-four teachers. Then, without warning 
them of my purpose or of what the results were apt to be, 
I asked them to correct the paper and mark it on a per- 
centage basis. When all had finished, the papers were 
collected and I at once tabulated the ratings on the black- 
board with the result shown in Table I. 

TABLE I. DISTRIBUTION OF THE RATINGS OF A SIXTH- 
GRADE ARITHMETIC PAPER 



Ratings 


Frequency 


90-94 


3 


85-89 


8 


80-84 


6 


75-79 


4 


70-74 


2 


65-69 


I 



Total 24 

The effect was striking. Nearly everybody had caught 
the idea and the expressions on the various faces showed 
me that there was no need of rubbing it in by pointing 
out the moral. Aroused interest was evident as I passed 
the papers back with the suggestion that we analyze the 
methods of marking to discover the factors which pro- 
duced such evident lack of agreement. We finally agreed 
on the following points: 



i8 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

1. Most of the teachers had aimed to mark the pupil's re- 
sponse to a problem entirely wrong if the answer was 
wrong, without regard to correctness of principle. 

2. Some gave half credit if the principle was right and the 
answer wrong. 

3. The majority marked answers entirely wrong if a decimal 
point was omitted or misplaced, while some gave vary- 
ing degrees of credit, if the digits of the answer were correct 
and the decimal point misplaced or omitted. 

4. A few had assigned weights to the various problems on 
the basis of their own judgments with far from uniform 
results. This factor actually seemed to have been the 
one which had produced the most extreme variations in 
the marking. 

Then some one suggested that we try it again and see if 
we could not do better. Several others seconded the idea, 
so I passed around copies of an eighth-grade pupil's his- 
tory paper. Never did teachers work more seriously than 
did those teachers for the next fifteen or twenty minutes. 
The papers were then collected and the marks tabulated 
as before with the results shown in Table II. 

TABLE n. DISTRIBUTION OF THE RATINGS OF AN EIGHTH- 
GRADE HISTORY PAPER 

^ Ratings Frequency 

90-94 I 

85-89 3 

80-84 10 

75-79 5 

70-74 2 

65-69 3 

Total 24 

Then followed a lively discussion, as a result of which 
the following important conclusions were unanimously 
agreed upon; 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 19 

1. That teachers' marks are ordinarily very apt to be inaccu- 
rate. 

2. That, due to the personal standards of the teacher and to 
individual marking systems, the work of the same child 
may be graded very high by one teacher and very low 

' by another. 

3. That such irresponsible rating may work serious injustice 
to the children. 

4. That the work of different schools cannot be accurately 
compared under such conditions. 

And best of all, these conclusions were mostly arrived 
at by the teachers themselves with the help of a few lead- 
ing questions on my part. Was it worth while? Would 
those teachers ever again correct test papers with the same 
self-satisfied assurance of the infallible justice of their 
marks? Would they ever again feel fully justified in 
retarding a pupil because he had been given a mark of 68 
when the passing mark was 70? 

It was now time to bring the meeting to a close. Several 
wanted to know what better method of marking could be 
found. I advised all who were interested in solving the 
problem to order at once Monroe's book. Measuring the 
Results of Teaching,^ and to think the matter over until 
our next meeting. 

The Second Meeting 

In preparation for the next meeting I made a list of twelve 
history questions on the events leading up to the American 
Revolution. The questions were as follows: 

1. How were laws made for the colonies? 

2. What sort of governments had the colonies? 

3. How was the commerce of the colonies regulated? 

1 Monroe, Walter S., Measuring the Results of Teaching. Houghton Mififlin 
Company. 



20 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



4. What kind of a king was George III? 

5. What was the Stamp Act? 

6. What were the objections to it? 

7. What was the Stamp Act Congress and what did it do? 

8. Plow did the British try to keep the colonists in order? 

9. What friends had the colonists in Great Britain? 

10. What was the Act of Association? 

11. How was it enforced? 

12. Distinguish between the real and the apparent reasons for 
the Revolution. 

When we were again assembled I passed two copies of 
this list to each teacher with the request that they rank 
the questions one, two, three, etc., in the order of their 
difficulty beginning with the easiest, and that they write 
these ranks opposite the questions on one of the papers 
which they had received. When they had finished, I 
asked each teacher to read the ranlcs she had assigned to 
the questions beginning with question one, while I tabu- 
lated them on the board in such a way that vertical col- 
umns would show the various ranks assigned to the same 
question and horizontal rows the ranks assigned to all the 
questions by each teacher. I regret that I have lost my 
copy of the original table, but the general arrangement 
(for four teachers only) is shown below without the correct 
figures. 



Teachers 


Rank assigned to each indicated question 


I 


2 


3 


4 


5 

9 

9 

10 

6 


6 


7 


8 


9 

5 

12 
6 
8 


10 

I 

S 

II 
2 


II 


12 


A 


6 
2 

5 

I 


4 

7 

12 

5 


2 
II 

8 
12 


7 
3 
3 
4 


12 

10 

4 

9 


3 

4 

7 

II 


8 
6 

I 
7 


10 
8 

9 
12 


II 


B 


I 


C 


2 


D 


3 





THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 21 

The tabulation, which I had made on the blackboard, 
showed such wide variations in the ranks assigned to the 
same question by different teachers, that a lively interest 
was aroused. In the ensuing discussion further conclu- 
sions were reached which may be summed up as follows: 

1. That if a test is to measure accurately a pupil's knowledge of 
the ground covered, the questions must be so selected as to 
bring out the most important ideas in the subject-matter. 

2. That there should be a large proportion of thought ques- 
tions in order to call for something more than a parrot- 
like repetition of memorized facts, so that the better 
students may be enabled to demonstrate their superior 
reasoning abilities. 

3. That some accurate method of weighting the questions 
must be used if accurate measurement of pupils' abilities 
and knowledge is to be expected. 

4. That the weighting of questions by individual teachers on 
the basis of their personal judgments is mere guess work, 
since, as was shown by our experiment, they cannot even 
judge accurately the relative difficulty of questions. 

5. That the average of the judgments of a number of teachers 
is apt to be more accurate than the judgment of a single 
one. 

In line with this last conclusion we then proceeded to 
find the average rank assigned each question and, with 
these averages as a basis, to rank the questions according 
to their relative difficulty as determined by the combined 
judgments of the teachers. Next I asked them to use 
these ranks as a guide and to assign values to each ques- 
tion so that the sum of the values would equal one hun- 
dred. It was observed that for each question the varia- 
tions in values were not as wide as the variations in ranks 
had been. This was attributed to the fact that the order 
of difficulty used as a guide and the limit of one hundred 



22 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

placed on the sum of the values would necessarily permit 
much less variation. The average results are shown in 
Table III. 

TABLE III. WEIGHTS ASSIGNED TO TWELVE HISTORY 
QUESTIONS ACCORDING TO TEACHERS' JUDGMENTS 

Average Average 

Question "' estimated estimated 

No. rank value 

I , 8 lo 

2 4 4 

3 9 12 

4 I I 

5 7 9 

6 5 7 

7 2 2 

8 6 8 

9 3 3 

lo II 14 

-II 10 13 

12 12 17 Total. . . 100 

The lesson of the day had been so well assimilated that 
some one suggested that since the ranking of the questions 
by each individual was all guesswork as proved by our 
experiment, then our averages were only averages of 
guesswork and hence likely to be far from reliable. For 
her part she did not see that we had any real proof that 
question twelve, for instance, was any harder than ques- 
tion three, and more than that she did n*t see how we were 
going to prove that it was. Then came what I was hoping 
for, but hardly expected. 

" The eighth grades have recently completed their 
study of the period of history which the questions cover. 
Why not give them as a test to these grades and so find 
out which questions are hardest? '^ This from a bright girl 
who had attended one summer session at Plymouth 
Normal. 

" How could you prove which questions are hardest by 
doing that? " I asked. 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 23 



« 



Why, if the questions were given to a large number of 
pupils, would it not be safe to conclude that the one which 
is missed the most times is hardest and that the one missed 
the next largest number of times is the next hardest, and 
so on?" 

The practical side of this suggestion appealed to the 
majority of the teachers at once and they were eager to 
try it. Since this was the very thing I had intended to 
propose in order to get material for discussion at our next 
meeting, you may be sure that I was not slow in taking 
advantage of their enthusiasm. So it was decided to give 
this list of questions as a history test to all the eighth- 
grade pupils in the district. The teachers were to bring 
the corrected papers with them to the next meeting. 

The Third Meeting 

I WATCHED the faces of the. teachers as they gathered 
for our third meeting. The dazed look had passed from 
most of them by this time and a look of intelligent com- 
prehension was taking its place. The books which they 
had ordered at my request had arrived during the week 
and they had been reading them. They were apparently 
beginning to get their bearings. There was a business- 
like air in the way they took their seats and prepared for 
the afternoon^s work that augured well for the future. 

The meeting having been called to order we began to 
investigate the results of the history test. It had been 
given to 106 pupils. As I called a question by number, 
each teacher told me how many times her pupils had 
missed it. I wrote the figures on the board, a column for 
each question. When the results had all been read they 
were summed and tabulated as in Table IV. 

This table showed that question four was the easiest 
since it was missed the least number of times and that 



24 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



TABLE IV. RANK OF HISTORY QUESTIONS IN DIFFICULTY 
BASED ON NUMBER OF TIMES MISSED 



Question No . . . 
Times missed . . 
Real rank 



I 


2 


3 


4 


5 


6 


7 


8 


9 


10 


II 


28 


44 


40 


8 


23 


20 


35 


29 


16 


60 


56 


5 


9 


8 


I 


4 


3 


7 


6 


2 


12 


II 



12 

SI 
10 



question ten was the hardest since it was missed the 
greatest number of times; also, that question ten was 
seven and a half times as hard as question four because it 
was missed seven and a half times as often. ^ This would 
indicate that, in weighting the questions, number ten 
should be valued seven and a half times as much as num- 
ber four. When these points had been discussed, even 
the teacher who was dissatisfied at our last meeting was 
convinced that we had found a fairly accurate method of 
evaluating questions. 

The next step was to find values for the questions ac- 
cording to their relative difficulties. We first assigned to 
the easiest question (number four), which was missed 
eight times, a value of one. Since the next question in 
order of difficulty (number nine) was missed sixteen times, 
or just twice as often as number four, we gave it a value of 
two. Question six was missed twenty times. As twenty 
is two and a half times eight, this question was valued two 
and a half. The same method was followed throughout. 

The sum of these values was found to be 51.5. Since 
the sum of the teachers' estimated values (Table III) was 
one hundred, it was necessary for comparative purposes 
that the sum of these values should also be one hundred. 
Evidently if each of them were multiplied by two, the 
sum of the resulting proportionate values would be 103. 

* Statistical difficulties involving the location of the zero point were ignored. 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 



25 



This was near enough to one hundred for our purpose and 
it had the advantage of yielding whole numbers. These 
may be seen in the last column of Table V, which sum- 
marizes the results of our study of the history questions. 

TABLE V. SUMMARY OF RANKS AND VALUES FOR EACH 
OF TWELVE HISTORY QUESTIONS 



Question 
No. 


Estimated 
rank 


Real 
rank 


Times 
missed 


Estimated 
value 


Value 

from 

times 

missed 


The same 

multiplied 

by 2 


I 


8 


5 


28 


10 


3-5 


7 


2 


4 


9 


44 


4 


5-5 


II 


3 


9 


8 


40 


12 


5-0 


10 


4 


I 


I 


8 


I 


I.O 


2 


^5 


7 


4 


23 


9 


3-0 


6 


6 


5 


3 


20 


7 


2.5 


5 


7 


2 


7 


35 


2 


4.5 


9 


8 


6 


6 


29 


8 


3.5 


7 


9 


3 


2 


16 


3 


2.0 


4 


10 


II 


12 


60 


14 


7.5 


15 


II 


10 


II 


56 


13 


7.0 


14 


12 


12 


10 


51 


17 


6.5 


13 



After the teachers had rated a few history papers using 
the two sets of values, we concluded our experiments. 
Crude and inaccurate they were, of course; but they were 
not intended to contribute to the statistics of educational 
measurements. They were rather designed to exemplify 
to the teachers that spirit of scientific investigation which 
is so rapidly making over our school systems, and in par- 
ticular to convince them that teachers' ratings as ordi- 
narily made are unreliable. And they had served well. 
All but two or three of the teachers had by this time 
expressed their firm conviction that tests devised by 
teachers and rated according to individual standards were 
of little use in finding out a pupil's real knowledge or 
ability, or in determining his standing with regard to other 



26 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

pupils of his age and grade. These two or three teachers 
no amount of accumulated evidence could convince, be- 
cause everything was unalterably settled to their way of 
thinking before the experiments were tried. The old 
methods had been in use for hundreds of years and must, 
therefore, be better than anything new. It is useless to 
waste time with such people. The only thing to do is to 
get rid of them at the first opportunity. 

A few more points were cleared up by general discussion. 
Some one objected that, with a passing mark of seventy, 
it was evident from the scores that two thirds of the 
pupils would fail to pass the test. This brought up an 
important point. Is it fair to mark pupils on a percentage 
basis with loo standing for perfection? Some thought it 
was. Some thought it was n't. Most of them had n't 
thought about it at all, but since the matter was called to 
their attention they were inclined to think that it was 
hardly fair. What fairer way could I suggest? 

I then explained what is meant by a median score, 
demonstrated with figures on the board the difference 
between median and average, pointed out the advantages 
of the median, and then proposed that we find the median 
score of the io6 history papers using the derived values 
for marking. This was found to be 65.1, to which I added 
10 per cent of itself and suggested that we use the result, 
71.6, as a standard score. Any child who got this score 
would be given a mark of 100. That is, a pupil's mark 
would be the per cent that his score was of the standard 
score. For instance, if pupil A had a score of 26, his mark 
would be 26 divided by 71.6 or ^6. If pupil B scored 63, 
his mark would be 63 divided by 71.6 or 90. A pupil who 
scored 8$ would receive a mark of 118. In using letters 
for marks this pupil would be marked A +. It was pretty 
well agreed that this method of marking would be emi- 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 27 

nently fair, provided standard scores were available. The 
method may not be scientifically accurate; but it is cer- 
tainly fairer than the ordinary method of marking on a 
percentage basis, and it has the advantage of simplicity. 

Then some one wanted to know if we should do away 
with teachers' tests entirely and depend on the standard- 
ized tests altogether. We finally decided that teachers' 
tests should be used often by way of written reviews for 
the benefit of the pupils, but that the results should not 
have too much weight in determining the pupil's final 
standing. The pupils themselves, however, need not 
know how much or how little weight these tests might 
have on their grading for promotion. 

Most of the standardized tests which I had ordered were 
at hand for this meeting. Samples of these were given to 
the teachers to study in connection with their new books 
on educational measurements. After explaining briefly 
the painstaking methods employed in deriving these tests 
and scales, I dismissed the meeting. 

The Fourth Meeting 

Our fourth meeting was devoted to the actual work of 
giving and scoring the tests. A few obvious facts were 
first emphasized, such as the need of accurate timing in 
cases where time was a factor, the fact that no help should 
be given the pupils other than clear and complete direc- 
tions, and the fact that when directions accompanied the 
tests they should be followed explicitly. I also warned 
the teachers to beware of copying on the part of pupils; 
and I then proceeded to administer the tests to the teach- 
ers just as they should be administered in the classroom. 
As each test was finished, we corrected and scored it, each 
teacher correcting and scoring her own paper for practice. 
In this way many obscure points were cleared up. Each 



28 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

teacher had seen each test given and had herself corrected 
and scored a sample of each test properly. They kept 
these corrected samples to use as models in correcting the 
tests which they were to give in their schools. Unless 
some such precaution is taken beforehand, the superin- 
tendent is sure to be surprised and dismayed when he gets 
the first packages of tests from his teachers. He will find 
that he must either return them to the teachers with time- 
consuming directions and explanations or go over most of 
them himself in order to secure accurate results. I had 
been through such experiences before on a small scale and 
intended to avoid them this time as far as possible. 

Since the tests were to be given to pupils the following 
week, each teacher then received a sufficient supply for her 
school. The tests were to be corrected and returned to me 
by mail within ten days. Unless a definite time limit 
is set and strictly adhered to, batches of tests from the 
various schools will come straggling in for two months 
after they are given out. Thus a few procrastinating 
teachers can delay the superintendent's part of the work 
to a very annoying extent. In order to tabulate and study 
results for the district as a whole, he must have all his 
data in hand at one time and as soon as possible after the 
tests are given out. In this case I was particularly anxious 
to have all the tests in on time as the grading of the schools 
was being delayed pending the results. So I laid special 
emphasis on the ten-day limit. 

The teachers were further warned that, although I had 
no reason to distrust anybody, the matter was too im- 
portant to permit taking any chances. Accordingly, I 
proposed to check the work of each teacher by giving one 
or two of the tests in her school after she had given all of 
them. By comparing the results of my tests with theirs 
of the same kind, I could readily detect any gross careless- 



THE COOPERATION OF TEACHERS 29 

ness or intentional dishonesty on the part of the teachers. 
There is considerable temptation for some short-sighted 
teachers who know that their own efficiency is being 
measured by these tests, to stretch the time limit or to 
give illegitimate aid to the pupils, or even to drill on the 
test itself, in the effort to make their classes show up well. 
Of course any intelligent teacher, knowing how the tests 
are used, would see the short-sightedness of such a policy, 
since it is evident that what might be gained on one test 
would be lost on the next. However, two or three such 
dishonest teachers may, at first, work sad havoc with the 
accuracy of a superintendent's final figures regarding the 
efficiency of his schools and teachers unless he takes some 
precautions to discover the culprits at the start. Hence 
my method of checking their work. 

Above all, tests should not be permitted to fall into the 
hands of pupils. Since they are to be used again and again 
to measure progress, teachers should be impressed with 
the importance of safeguarding them. As fast as the 
papers are finished, they should be taken up to prevent 
possible copying of the questions or problems by the 
pupils in preparation for future tests. Of course, this does 
not apply in the case of the writing, spelling, and composi- 
tion scales because of the different manner in which they 
are used. In fact it is well to display these scales on the 
walls of the schoolroom so that the pupils may try to 
measure their own work. 

In this chapter I have attempted to give an account of 
how the cooperation of teachers was secured in the use of 
standardized tests. It may not be intensely interesting 
in the reading, but it was assuredly interesting in the 
doing. Results since have proved its value. I can 
recommend the general procedure to any one with a 
similar problem to solve. 



CHAPTER IV 

USING STANDARDIZED TESTS FOR 
GRADING PURPOSES 

In Chapter III I explained how the cooperation of teach- 
ers was secured in the use of standardized tests and how 
the teachers were instructed as to the manner of giving 
and scoring them. The chapter concluded with an ac- 
count of the distribution of the tests with directions that 
they were to be used at once in the schools. These schools, 
as I have indicated, were not graded. Indeed, it was the 
immediate purpose of this preliminary test to secure a 
satisfactory basis for grading them. 

Supervising the Testing 

During the ten days allotted to the teachers for giving, 
scoring, and returning the tests, I visited as many schools 
as possible, giving advice and help where it appeared to 
be most needed. Considerable time and labor were thus 
saved in the later tabulation of results. Moreover, this 
plan enabled me afterwards to avoid much of the delay 
incident to the repetition of tests found on examination to 
have been carelessly or improperly given. 

Even so, it was not all smooth sailing. In spite of pre- 
liminary precautions to ensure accurate results in the 
shortest possible time, a number of tests had to be re- 
peated before I could feel sure that the results were fairly 
accurate. The returns of two or three teachers indicated 
such gross carelessness or incompetence or both that I was 
obliged to repeat the tests in their schools myself. But 
since the purpose of this Chapter is to show how the re- 



TESTS FOR GRADING PURPOSES 



31 



suits of these tests were used for grading purposes, I shall 
confine myself to that topic. 

Converting Scores into Grades 

The first step was to mark each paper with the grade 
corresponding to the score recorded on it by the teacher. 
For instance, one pupil's score on Woody's Multiplication 
Scale was 15, Since 15 is the standard score for grade vi, 
this paper was marked " 6." Another pupil's score on the 
same scale was 16. Since 15 is the standard score for 
grade vi and 17 is the standard score for grade vii, this 
paper was marked" 6 1/2," On Courtis's Silent Reading 
Test a certain pupil received the following scores: words 
read per minute, 140; questions answered in five minutes, 
38; index of comprehension, 94, The standard scores for 
grades 11- vi are given as follows: 



Words per minute . . 
Questions in five minutes 
Index of comprehension , 



II 


III 


IV 


V 


84 


113 


14s 


168 


i6 


24 


30 


37 


59 


78 


89 


93 



VI 

191 
40 

95 



Hence the grades marked on the paper were, for words 
per minute, 4; for questions answered in five minutes, 
5 1/3; for index of comprehension, 5 1/2. 

If teachers are instructed to keep all the tests of one kind 
together rather than all the tests of one pupil, this task of 
grading the papers is not interminable. As the teachers 
correct the papers, they should mark the score plainly on 
the front page. Then the superintendent may compare 
these scores with the standard scores and grade the papers 
correspondingly. About two days sufiiced to mark the 
approximately two thousand papers from all the schools. 
The work was considerably facilitated by having on a 



32 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

single sheet of cardboard the tables of standard scores for 
all the tests. Working at a large table with this sheet 
propped up in front of me, I could after a little practice 
ascertain at a glance the grade corresponding to any score. 
The advantage of such a procedure will soon become 
obvious to any one who attempts to mark a large number 
of papers with the standard scores scattered in a dozen 
different books and pamphlets. (By way of an aside, I 
wonder why all the authors of tests do not print the 
standard scores on the front page. It would save a lot of 
time for the people who use the tests.) 

Devising a Graph Card 

Next came the harder task of devising a method of re- 
cording results which would meet four conditions: (i) be 
in a form readily available for grading purposes; (2) be 
concrete and graphic enough to be clearly understood by 
teachers, pupils, and parents; (3) show on a single form 
small enough to be conveniently filed the standing of a 
pupil, a class, or a school in all subjects of the course of 
study for which standardized tests are available; (4) be in 
a form that could be used as the beginning of a continuous 
record to measure progress of pupils and ability of teachers. 
The class record sheets and graph sheets accompanying 
several of the tests were carefully studied with a view to 
adapting them to the purpose in hand. I soon decided, 
however, that they were too complicated and time-con- 
suming for practical use by the superintendent who must 
do all his own tabulating of results or have it done by un- 
trained teachers. Certainly such record and graph sheets 
would not meet any of the last three conditions mentioned 
above. They could not be easily understood by pupils 
and parents. There would be as many sheets as there 
were subjects; and several files instead of one would there- 



TESTS FOR GRADING PURPOSES 33 

fore be required. Furthermore, such sheets do not ac- 
company all the tests, and only two or three tests make 
any provision for keeping permanent records of the scores 
of individual pupils. Some sort of simple graphic repre- 
sentation that would include all the tests on a single small 
sheet was absolutely necessary if the scheme was to be 
simple enough for practical use. 

After considerable experimenting, during which some 
of the graphs evolved resembled nothing so much as a lost 
trail in the desert, I finally adopted the following plan as 
both simple and practical. I ruled several 4X6 cards in 
copying ink with vertical and horizontal lines as shown in 
Figure i. The vertical lines were numbered at the top to 
represent subjects and phases of subjects in which tests 
had been given. The horizontal lines were numbered with 
Roman numerals to represent the eight grades of the ele- 
mentary school. From these originals nearly four hun- 
dred hektograph copies were made — enough for all the 
pupils in my schools above the first grade. 

The Meaning of the Graph Card 

With these forms in hand and with the papers properly 
graded, it did not take very long to construct a graph for 
each individual pupil. Figure i is a copy of an actual 
record on file in my office. It is the graph of L. D., an 
eleven-year-old boy in the village school, Tamworth, 
New Hampshire. Table VI shows the same data includ- 
ing the subjects and phases of subjects corresponding to 
the numbers of the vertical lines of Figure i. L. D.'s 
grade for each test is shown in Table VI in the right-hand 
column opposite the name of the test. In constructing 
the graph a heavy dot was placed at the intersection of 
vertical line i with grade line iii to indicate third-grade 
ability in rate of silent reading; a second dot at the inter- 



34 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



section of vertical line 2 with grade line vii to indicate 
seventh-grade ability in number of questions answered in 
five minutes; a third dot at the intersection of vertical 
line 3 with grade line iii to indicate third-grade ability 
according to index of comprehension; and so on until the 
pupil's standing in all the subjects had been properly 
located by dots. The dots were then connected by a 



Name L-i U 








INDIVIDUAL RECORD 

Acre /I School ~ra-ry,.^nythVilta.q2 






1 


2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lO 11 1 2 13 14 15 16 17 isl 


VIII 
VII 
VI 

V 
IV 

III 
II 

I 








































































1 


\ 


\ 




\ 


























/ 


\ 






\ 






/ 


^ 


\ 






/ 


\ 








/ 


\ 






\ 




/ 








\ 




1 




\ 


y 






\ 


1 




\ 


/ 

































































































Fig. 1. Sample op Individual Record. Data the Same as in 

Table VI 

heavy line giving the graph as shown. In actual practice 
the grades marked on the papers were translated directly 
into properly placed dots on the graph card without con- 
structing tables like Table VI. This can be done very 
rapidly with a little practice. Of course, for this purpose 
the papers should be sorted so as to g(s,t all the test papers 
of one child together. By this means each pupil's graph 
can be completed before taking up the next. 
The Older in which the subjects are entered on the graph 



TESTS FOR GRADING PURPOSES 



35 



TABLE VI. RECORD OF L. D. 
(See also Figure i) 



No. 



I 

2 

3 
4 
S 
6 

7 
8 

9 
lo 
II 

12 

13 
14 

15 
i6 

17 



Subjects and phases of subjects 



Rate of silent reading: Courtis's Test 

Writing speed 

Writing quality 

Questions answered in five minutes: Courtis's Test 

Index of comprehension: Courtis's Test 

Spelling 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Mixed fundamentals 

Arithmetical reasoning: correct principle 

Arithmetical reasoning : correct answer 

Visual vocabulary 

English organization 

Geography 

History 



Grade 



III 

VII 

III 

VII 

VII 

III 

IV 
V 

VI 

V 
IV 
IV 
VI 

V 

IV3^ 

V 



card is significant. Reading is placed first because all 
grades are tested for reading ability. Spelling and writing 
follow, since they come early in school life. Then come 
the four fundamental operations of arithmetic, and so on, 
those subjects coming last which are taught only in the 
upper grades. Suppose the subjects were given in the 
following order: reading, history, spelling, arithmetical 
reasoning, addition, geography, etc. Then the graph of a 
third-grade pupil could not be drawn, since such a pupil 
would not be tested for history, geography, or arithmetical 
reasoning. The dots on the graph card indicating his 
grade of ability in the subjects which he does take would 
not be located on consecutive vertical lines. Hence no 
continuous line connecting the dots could be drawn. 
With the subjects arranged on the card in the order shown. 



36 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

the graph will be complete as far as it goes, although it 
may extend only part-way across the card. 

Using numbers to represent the subjects on the graph 
card is not such a disadvantage as it might at first appear 
to be. One very soon learns to associate the subjects with 
their respective numbers. The slight disadvantage ex- 
perienced in the beginning is very much more than offset 
by the advantage of being able to use a much smaller card 
than would be possible if the names of all the subjects 
were written in. 

Grading the Pupils '^^^ 

Next came the problem of deciding upon the grades in 
which pupils should be placed for the year's work. A 
glance at the graph for L. D. shows that he had an aver- 
age of about fifth-grade ability at the beginning of the 
school year. In fact the average of his grade as shown in 
Table VI is almost exactly five. Clearly, then, since the 
standards are June standards, he belongs in the sixth grade 
for the current year. Therefore the sixth-grade line on 
his card was emphasized by overlining to indicate that he 
is a sixth-grade pupil. Then, with his name, age, and the 
name of the school entered as shown in Figure i, the card 
was ready for filing. In the same manner a graph card 
was prepared for each child, his grade determined, and the 
card placed on file. 

Within two weeks from the time the first tests were re- 
turned, a graph card had been filed for every pupil (above 
the first grade) in the district, and each pupil had been 
assigned to the grade corresponding to the average abiHty 
indicated by his or her graph. A week later each teacher 
had received copies of the graphs of her own pupils in 
order that she might see where their weak points were and 
govern her work accordingly. 



TESTS FOR GRADING PURPOSES 



37 



Although in about a score of cases it was later found 
advisable to place a child a grade above or below that 
indicated by his graph, on the whole this method of grad- 
ing has proved surprisingly accurate. Most of the cases 
referred to were those of very bright children who, on the 
basis of the test results, would have been advanced to a 
grade very much above normal for their ages. The graph 
in Figure 2 illustrates a case in point. This eight-year-old 



Name l^ .L>... 








INDIVIDUAL RECORD 

Ao-P..?^. .. School ...Choc or u a 








2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lO 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | 


VIII 

VII 

VI 

V 

IV 

% 

II 
I 










































































/ 


\ 






























/ 




\ 






















/ 


\ 


^ 








\ 










/ 




\ 


/ 




^ 


/ 












\ 


/ 






\ 


/ 





























































































Fig. 2. Sample of Individual Record op a Bright Child (E. C.) 



girl shows an average of fifth-grade ability. Her mental 
age, as indicated by the Otis Group Intelligence Scale, is 
twelve years. She is fully capable of doing sixth-grade 
work this year. However, in spite of the opinions of some 
eminent educators to the contrary, I cannot convince 
myself that it is wise to rush such children through school, 
especially in a district like this where the elementary school 
is pretty sure to see the beginning and end of their school 
life. Is it not better to keep them in school until they are 



38 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

at least fourteen, giving them a chance to do more and 
harder work than their classmates of mediocre ability, and 
supplying them with much carefully selected informa- 
tional supplementary reading to broaden their minds? 
There were four other cases of this kind in the same school. 
This, then, is a preliminary account of how standardized 
tests and scales were used to solve the grading problem. 
I believe that any one confronted with a similar problem 
will find the scheme practical. Nor will the labor involved 
prove either monotonous or uninteresting to one whose 
heart is in his work. 



CHAPTER V 

CONDITIONS REVEALED BY THE USE OF 
STANDARDIZED TESTS 

While making out the graph cards of individual pupils for 
grading purposes as described in chapter IV, I gradually 
became conscious of certain tendencies affecting the 
majority of the graphs. Not only was the variation great 
among individuals in different subjects, but there was a 
certain sameness in it that struck me as being significant 
of fundamental weaknesses in the school system. If the 
graphs had been on transparent cards and had been placed 
in a pile, their low and high points would have tended to 
coincide. That is, in certain subjects most of the pupils 
tended to grade high throughout the district, while in 
other subj'ects they tended to grade low. 

The Graph Cards Described 

In Figures 3 to 7, the numbers at the left of the horizontal 
lines represent the grades, while those at the top of the 
vertical lines stand for the various subjects as follows: ^ 



I. 


Rate of silent reading 


9- 


Writing, rate 


2. 


Comprehension in reading 


10. 


Writing, quality 


3- 


Addition 


II. 


Arithmetical reasoning 


4. 


Subtraction 


12. 


English organization 


5- 


Multiplication 


13. 


Visual vocabulary 


6. 


Division 


14. 


Language 


7- 


Mixed fundamentals of 


15. 


Geography 




arithmetic 


16. 


History 


8. 


Spelling 







^This arrangement of subjects is somewhat different from the illustrative 
arrangement shown in chapter iv. 



40 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



In each of these figures the heavy horizontal line is 
drawn at the grade in which the pupil was placed as a 
result of the September testing. The solid lines show the 
grading of the pupils according to each of the tests at the 
beginning of the year; the broken lines show their grading 
at the end of the year. In interpreting these figures it 
should be remembered that, as before stated, the grading 





FIGURE 3 

SCOTT GRADE V 


CHICK'S CORNER SCHOOL 




23456789 


lO n 12 13 14 15 16 


8 
7 
6 
5 
4 
S 
2 
1 


































































/ 


N 


iv 












/ 

/ 


\ 

\ 










/ 


,<y 




\ 


:^ 


v"^ 






/ 
/ 


V 


\ \ 
\ \ 
\ \ 










/; 










\ 


\ 




1 j 
1 1 
1 




\ \ 


A 


-^V 

V 





*■ 


/ 














\v^ 


1 1 
1 / 
If 




\ 


/ 


\ 




/ 


/ 


SEP- 


'EMB 


PR C.t 


~OPP 


^ ... 






1 


















/ 




JUN 


E SCORFS 































































Fig. 3. 

is based on June scores. In other words, if a child's score 
on any test equals the standard for the fourth grade, his 
performance is that of a child who has completed the 
fourth grade. Since his scores (obtained in September) 
indicate that he has already attained fourth-grade pro- 
ficiency, he will naturally be placed in the class which is 
just beginning the fifth-grade work. 

In Figure 3 the solid line shows the curve of Scott, a 
twelve-year-old, fifth-grade boy in one of the Sandwich 
schools, at the beginning of the year. The high and low 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 



41 



points are more pronounced than in most cases. The 
solid lines in Figures 4 and 5 are the September curves of 
two other pupils drawn at random from among the cards 
of the Madison and Tamworth schools. All three of these 
pupils are normal or above according to the Otis Group 
Intelligence Scale. The broken lines in these figures are 
the end-of-the-year curves. <■■ 



FIGURE 4 

EVERETT GRADE VII TAMWORTH VILLAGE SCHOOL 


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 


8 

7 
6 
5 
4 
3 
2 
1 
































/ 






,^— - 


■»»^ 












// 






^,. 






/ 









"^-^ 


R 


'^ 


\ 

\ 


/ 

/ 
/ 
1 


/ 


\ ^ 


■" 






\ 


/ 
















// 






/ 


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\ 


/ 














V 


v 








N 


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SEP 


rPMR 


PR c: 


:ORE 


s 




























JUNP ?5COR|S'« 



























































PlQ.4.' 

It will help in the understanding of the figures to take 
the case of a particular child. Consider the record of 
Paul (Figure 5). His score in the September test for rate 
of silent reading was 62, The third-grade score for rate 
of silent reading is 60. Accordingly, this boy showed 
third-grade ability in rate of silent reading in the first test. 
The first point on the solid line is, therefore, located at the 
intersection of the third-grade line with the vertical line 
I. In the June test Paul's score for rate of silent reading 
was 97, Since 97 is midway between 92 and 102, the 



42 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



standard scores for the sixth and seventh grades respec- 
tively, the first point on the broken line is located about 
halfway between the sixth- and seventh-grade lines on the 
vertical line i. 

Similarly, in the first test his score for comprehension 
was 12, which is somewhat below the fourth-grade stand- 
ard. His score on the second tests, however, was quite 
equal to the standard of the seventh grade. 



FIGURES 
PAUL GRADE VI MADISON CORNER SCHOOL 


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lO 11 12 13 14 15 16 


8 

7 
6 
5 
4 

3 

2 
1 




















































/ 


\ 








/ 




^*^' 


•^^_ 


,. 


•^ 


^ 


< 






/) 


h 


1 

/ 


\ 


/ 




J 







\ 




^ 


\ 




/ 
/ 

/ 


/ 


\ 


/ 

J 


> 


/' ■ 




/ 














\ 


f / 




\ 


/ 


\ 





A 
















> 






\ 


/ 














SEP 


TCMia 


eo c 


:ORE 


", .ll. 




























JUNP ?;cORF<; 





























































FiQ. 5. 



Tendencies shown by the Graphs 

The reader's attention is directed to the fact that in all 
the accompanying figures there is a tendency for the 
valleys and peaks of the curve for the June test to flatten 
out toward the horizontal. This represents the effect of 
the remedial measures taken in the interim between Sep- 
tember and June. 
It will be noted that these pupils stood high in the four 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 



43 



fundamental operations of arithmetic (3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) 
and in Greene's English Organization Test (12), which 
is mostly a test of general intelligence. In arithmetical 
reasoning or problem- solving (11), spelling (8), and lan- 
guage (14), they were near to grade standards. In rate 
(i) and comprehension (2) of silent reading, in rate (9) 
and quality (10) of handwriting, in visual vocabulary (13), 
and in the content subjects (15 and 16) each of these 
pupils ranked from low to very low. 



FIGURE 6 

GRAPH SHOWING AVERAGE SCORES OF 62 NORMAL SEATENTH-GRADE PUPILS 


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lO 11 12 13 14 15 16 


8 
7 
6 
5 
4 
3 
2 
1 


































>' 


^ 


,^ 


vr^ 


^^, 


^^ 


's 




/ 


y, 


\ 








'^^>. 


/ 1 


' ■ 


y 


X 








\ 


/ 
/ 
/ 




\ \ 


,-'"' 




"*■"■—-. 


S, 














\ 


\ 


/ , 
/ / 
1 / 




\ 


/ 


\ 




X 
















N 








r 


\ 


-^ 








































SEP 


rPMR 


PR C! 


:ORE 


e 




























JUN 


i SCORES 

















































. - '. . ' ^ Fig. 6. 

The graphs of 72.24 per cent of all the normal pupils 
above the third grade showed the same tendencies to a 
greater or less degree.-^ Figure 6 is a sort of composite 
graph of all the normal seventh-grade pupils in the district. 
They numbered 62. Figure 7 is a similar graph for the 
104 normal fourth-grade children. These graphs were 

* In making this study the cards of all children who ranked below normal ac- 
copding to the intelligence tests were thrown out. 



44 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



obtained by averaging the scores of the pupils in each 
separate subject and using the grades corresponding to the 
averages to locate the points on the graphs. For example, 
at the September test the average seventh-grade score for 
rate of silent reading was 95.2. This is a little above the 
standard fifth-grade score of 93. Hence the first point on 
the solid curve in Figure 6 is located just above the fifth- 
grade line. Similarly, the average of all the seventh- 



FIGURE 7 
GRAPH SHOWING AVERAGE SCORES OF 104 NORMAL FOURTH-GRADE PUPILS 



8 9 10 n 12 13 14 15 16 




Fig. 7. 

grade scores in comprehension of reading was 17.8. Since 
this is about two-thirds of the way from the fourth-grade 
standard toward that of the fifth grade, the second point 
is located two-thirds of the way between the fourth- and 
fifth-grade lines. 

The Search eor Causes; Over-Emphasis on 

Arithmetic 

Having observed in the graphs these general tendencies 

of which I have spoken, I next made a survey of the time- 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 45 

tables and teaching methods in vogue in the district in 
order to formulate reasonable hypotheses to account for 
the conditions thus revealed and in order to aid in planning 
remedial measures. 

The universally high scores in all the tested phases of 
arithmetic were indicative of over-emphasis on this sub- 
ject. The time-tables showed the relatively large amount 
of time assigned to arithmetic. The idea seems to be 
prevalent among teachers, pupils, and parents that arith- 
metic is the all-important subject. These schools are no 
doubt typical of the schools in small rural communities. 
Moreover, being widely scattered, they have little com- 
munication with each other. It would seem, therefore, 
that the results of this study fairly represent conditions in 
most of the smaller rural schools where standardized tests 
have not been used and where their diagnostic values have 
not been realized. 

I am aware that these findings are contrary to those of 
more eminent workers who have found arithmetic to be a 
subject in which pupils usually grade low when measured 
by standardized tests. Possible reasons for this difference 
may be (i) that the results from all the pupils were con- 
sidered instead of only the normal ones and (2) that their 
tests were given in city schools. 

This over-emphasis on arithmetic in the smaller rural 
schools is not an unnatural condition. In fact there are 
sound reasons for it. In the first place, arithmetic is 
easier for the untrained teacher to teach than the content 
subjects. Fair results can probably be obtained with less 
mental effort on the part of the teacher in the teaching of 
arithmetic than in the teaching of history and geography. 
The work is largely a matter of drill, and drill is easy for 
the teacher. In the second place, teachers usually have 
more immediately obvious success in the teaching of 



46 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

arithmetic. It is human nature to like to do the things 
in which we best succeed. In the third place, pupils like 
arithmetic (a) because they enjoy good lively drill work 
in the fundamentals; (b) because they do not feel quite so 
much " at sea " in preparing an assignment of the next ten 
problems in arithmetic as they do in facing an assignment 
of the next ten pages in history or geography or physiology; 
and (c) because children like puzzles. The older pupils 
especially enjoy solving the problems of this character 
which our textbooks abundantly supply. In the fourth 
place, when it is left to the children to divide their study 
time among the different school subjects — as has been 
the common custom in unsupervised rural schools — an 
undue amount of time will usually be spent on arithmetic. 
Not knowing what to do with improperly assigned lessons 
in the content subjects, but knowing that they must keep 
busy at something, children will turn to their arithmetics 
with which they feel most capable of doing independent 
work. Finally, the demands of parents on the teacher 
that their children be " learnt how to figger " is another 
factor in the situation. All these reasons cooperate in 
bringing about over-emphasis on arithmetic in the rural 
schools. 

As the beginning of an attempt to remedy this condition 
we decided to reduce for a while the time devoted to 
arithmetic by one half and to use the time thus gained for 
subjects in which the schools were making a poor showing. 

Other Tendencies 

Arithmetic was the only school subject in which there ap- 
peared a general tendency to rank very much above grade. 
The only other markedly high spot in the graphs was that 
denoting their grading in Greene's English Organization 
Test. In this test the pupils demonstrate their ability or 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 47 

lack of ability to rearrange broken sentences so as to make 
sense. Here is a sample of the disarranged sentences of 
which the test is composed; 

wanted, to go home, him, the dog 

Since this is largely a test of intelKgence, the prevalent 
high scores of the pupils simply go to show that their low 
ratings in subjects other than arithmetic were not due to 
lack of mental ability, a fact also supported by their scores 
in the Otis Group Intelligence Scale. 

The average scores for problem-solving in arithmetic 
were close to grade standards for each grade. The reason 
why the pupils did not do as well in this particular phase 
of arithmetical ability as they did in fundamentals will be 
discussed a little later. Spelling and language are other 
subjects in which drill work figures very prominently. 
Although in each of these two subjects there were wide 
differences between the lowest and highest scores in each 
grade, the averages were well up to or above standard, as 
shown by the soHd lines in Figures 6 and 7. 

The Writing Situation 

Writing averaged the lowest of all the subjects in every 
school but one. The teacher of this school had received 
business-college training and was good in muscular-move- 
ment penmanship. The low averages in writing led me to 
make a special' investigation of the methods of teaching 
that subject in the district. A round of observation con- 
vinced me, not only that the teaching of writing was being 
neglected, but also that what teaching there was had 
little value. The copy-book method was in use in every 
school except the one just mentioned. The teachers in 
general did not know how to teach writing. Therefore 
they had little success with it and did not like to teach it. 



48 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Upon inquiry as to how the writing period was conducted, 
I learned that in several cases at least the teacher would 
simply tell the pupils to take their writing-books and write 
for ten minutes. During this time she would sit at her 
desk and correct papers. At the end of the period, without 
even looking at the copy-books, she would tell them to 
put away their writing materials and go on with other 
work. In very few of the writing periods that I observed 
personally was there any adequate attempt to teach the 
children how to write. Is it strange that the writing 
scores were disgracefully low? I wonder if this condition 
is typical of schools in smaller rural communities with 
untrained teachers, or is it a specialty in this district? i 

In an attempt to remedy the condition I tried to arouse 
the teachers to its seriousness, and I introduced a method 
of business writing into all the schools. This was some- 
what of a venture, since most of the teachers had had no 
training in muscular-movement writing. However, they 
were all informed regarding the correspondence course for 
teachers conducted by the publishers of the system, and 
were encouraged to take it. Several of them did so, and 
by the end of the year they were doing passable work as 
teachers of the new method. 

As a result of this radical change the writing conditions 
in the schools are now in a somewhat chaotic condition. 
It takes time to break up the old finger-movement habits 
and perfect new ones. Hence the graphs show little im- 
provement in writing scores for the year. We hope, how- 
ever, that during the coming year a continuation of our 
efforts will produce definite improvement in the quality of 
handwriting. 

The chief difficulty seems to be to get the children to 
use the muscular movement outside of the period of writ- 
ing drill. Hereafter, in order to further our efforts, no 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 49 

written work will be accepted unless it is done with muscu- 
lar movement. We believe it is largely a waste of time to 
compel a pupil to write with muscular movement for ten 
minutes a day and then to let him use finger movement in 
writing his compositions. 

Poor Results in Reading, and Why 

The reading scores were also scandalously low. Both the 
individual graphs (Figures 3, 4, and 5) and the grade 
graphs (Figures 6 and 7) exhibit this fact in a striking 
manner. Analysis of the situation furnished several quite 
probable reasons for the poor showing in silent reading. 

First, the pupils had not been taught silent reading. 
The reading drill in the schools was, and always had been, 
oral. Only two or three of the teachers had any concep- 
tion of what is meant by silent-reading drill. The oral 
reading was conducted in the old-fashioned way which 
needs no description — and mostly in a slipshod manner 
at that. The fact that the children were tested for silent 
reading when all their class work had been in oral reading 
was probably the chief reason for the low scores. 

Second, in most of the schools there was only one set of 
readers for each grade. The younger pupils knew most 
of the stories in the upper-grade books from hearing them 
read over and over by the older pupils. The fact that 
they knew the gist of these stories long before they ever 
reached the grades in which the books were used, that 
they had " studied " the lesson over several times at their 
seats (perhaps), and that each pupil was provided with a 
book in class, precluded any chance for real, live interest 
in the class work. Many of the teachers, even, did not 
seem to be over-enthusiastic. 

Third, the low scores resulting from the use of Thorn- 
dike's Visual Vocabulary Tests indicate that lack of word 



50 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

knowledge probably accounted to a large degree for the 
poor results in reading. It may well be that the narrow 
range of reading, due to lack of variety in books and to the 
conspicuous absence of school libraries, was responsible 
for the limited reading vocabularies of the children. 

In the light of the above-described conditions the low 
scores in content subjects need little explanation. Success 
in history, geography, etc., depends on ability to study 
effectively. Efficient study is efficient silent reading. 
Even in arithmetic, much if not most of the difficulty en- 
countered by the pupils in solving problems lies in their 
inability to read and understand them as they appear in 
the text. Poor ability in silent reading, then, helps to 
explain why the scores in the problem- solving phase of 
arithmetic were so much lower than those in the funda- 
mental operations. 

A New Policy as to Reading 

These matters were brought to the attention of the 
teachers. They readily concluded that reading is the 
most important subject in the school, because upon it 
depends success in most of the other subjects. We there- 
fore decided to give reading a place in the program com- 
mensurate with its importance. For the rest of the year 
most of the reading time was devoted to intensive drill 
in silent reading. Different methods of conducting this 
drill were devised in order to furnish variety and in order 
to keep interest alive. Much of the work in geography, 
history, physiology, civics, etc., was taken up as class drill 
in silent reading. Oral quizzes every few days by way of 
review in these subjects took the place of the customary 
daily question-and-answer recitation. In this way the 
time usually available for reading drill was quadrupled. 
Did so much reading drill get monotonous? The chil- 



CONDITIONS REVEALED 51 

dren will testify that it did not. Did the content subjects 
suffer from giving up so much seat study and question- 
and-answer recitation? The graphs clearly indicate the 
answer. 

We adopted also a definite policy of vocabulary building. 
New words were constantly introduced to the pupils by 
psychological methods. They were introduced as the 
names of ideas after the ideas themselves had been vividly 
brought to their attention by objects, pictures, or lively 
descriptions. 

The number of reading books in the schools was multi- 
plied by ten or twelve, and a generous beginning of school 
libraries was made. For the most part the new books 
were informational rather than merely entertaining. Yet 
they were books that appeal to children — and, indeed, 
they did appeal to them. Our difficulty now is not in 
getting the pupils to read, but in getting them to do any- 
thing else but read. 

What did it all amount to? Well, look at the broken 
Knes in the preceding figures. They speak for themselves. 
They are the graphs of the same pupils and of the same 
grades at the end of the school year. 



CHAPTER VI 

MEASURING THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS BY 
MEANS OF STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Teachers' Judgments of Progress Unsatisfactory 

From time out of mind the estimate of a pupil's progress in 
his school work has been left to the more or less excellent 
judgment of his teacher, a judgment often warped by 
personal prejudice due to his behavior in school, his per- 
sonal appearance, or his father's standing in the commun- 
ity. The fact that the teacher gave tests and ranked the 
child on the quality of his reactions to them does not 
necessitate a modification of the above statement. For 
those tests were based solely on what she Judged the child 
ought to know concerning the various school subjects as a 
result of her particular line of instruction. She had no 
way of knowing definitely what a child of his age and grade 
really ought to know in order to be as well informed as 
other children of his age and grade in other schools. Even 
the grading of the papers, after they were corrected, was 
mostly a matter of judgment, as has been previously 
shown. 

Some of the more unthinking teachers took the testing 
and grading very seriously, marked the papers very care- 
fully on a percentage basis, and then " passed " the pupil 
or " flunked " him according to whether his mark was 70 
or only 69. Others, realizing more or less vaguely the 
injustice of such a procedure, graded the pupils' work as 
excellent, good, fair, poor, or very poor, which they could 
probably have done just as accurately without giving 
any tests for grading purposes at all. 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 53 

Standardized Tests used to Measure Progress 

But there is no longer any valid excuse for such hap- 
hazard methods of measuring the results of teaching in 
elementary schools. The standardized tests and scales 
furnish us with definite norms of achievement by means of 
which we can compare any child's work with the median 
or average for his age or grade and decide justly as to 
whether or not he is making normal progress. 

One of my purposes in using tests has been to measure 
the progress of pupils in their studies. Thus far ^ we have 
given the tests four times in all the schools of the district. 
They have been given at intervals of several months so as 
to permit progress between tests to show plainly in the 
graphs. Three of these test periods — the ones particu- 
larly of interest in this chapter — fell within the school year 
1919-20. All of the data from these several tests were 
graphically recorded and filed. The records are very 
interesting and highly satisfactory so far as proof of the 
efl&ciency of this method of measurement of progress is 
concerned, although, of course, they do not always show 
satisfactory progress on the part of the pupils. 

As heretofore stated, our plan is to give standardized 
tests in as many of the elementary-school subjects as 
possible to all the pupils in the district three times a year. 
They were given first in September, 191 9, for grading 
purposes and to get a starting-point from which to meas- 
ure progress. In February, 1920, the tests were given 
again in order to find out how the pupils were progressing 
and particularly to discover along what lines, if any, 
unsatisfactory progress was being made, so that the teach- 
ers might see where increased effort or change of method 

1 This chapter was written some time after the preceding chapters. 



54 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

was needed. In June, 1920, they were given a third time 
for promotion purposes. 

The scores of the individual pupils in these tests were 
first recorded on 4 X 6 cards in the form of graphs. Each 
time a new test was given a new graph was drawn on each 
pupil's card in a different color, so that at the end of June 
I had, for each pupil in the district above the first grade, 
a graph card which showed at a glance his standing in all 
the subjects tested for three different periods in the school 
year. Each teacher had duplicate cards for the pupils of 
her particular school. 

The Graph Card 

More recently, however, I have devised and had 
printed a 5 X 8 graph card which is considerably more 
convenient than the makeshift in use last year.^ The 
graphs reproduced in this chapter are shown on the new 
form (Figures 8 to 11). This new card contains not only 
the names of the tests, but also the standard scores for 
each of them. Directly below the name of each test is a 
vertical line upon which the standard scores for that test 
are printed at the intersections of the vertical Hne with the 
horizontal grade lines. For instance, the sixth-grade 
standard score for comprehension in Monroe's Silent 
Reading Test is 21. Accordingly, this number is printed 
at the intersection of the sixth-grade line with the vertical 
line below " Comprehension " and under the name of that 
test. The fourth-grade standard score for Woody's Divi- 
sion Scale is 5. The figure 5 is therefore printed at the 
intersection of the fourth-grade line with the vertical 
line directly beneath *'D" under " Arithmetic- Woody." 

* A still more recent edition of these cards has been published as the "Brooks 
Individual Graph-Record Card." These cards may be obtained, in any desired 
quantity, from the J. L, Hammett Co., Cambridge, Mass. 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 55 

Since in the Ayres Spelling Scale and in the Hahn-Lackey 
Geography Scale the standard scores for any particular 
grade vary with the column used for testing, no scores 
could be printed for these tests. So, merely for con- 
venience, the Roman numerals marking the grade lines 
were repeated at their intersections with the verticals for 
these two tests. The lowest score on any test line shows 
the lowest grade in which that test is given. For example, 
Woody's Division Scale is not given below the third grade. 
Hence, the lowest score for this test (3) is on the third- 
grade line. Similarly, Starch's History Test is not given 
below the sixth grade. 

Figures 8, 9, and 10 are copies of the graph records of 
three different children for the school year 1919-20. All 
three were taught by the same teacher throughout the 
year. The graphs are given with explanations and com- 
ments for the purpose of showing a method of recording 
results so as to indicate at a glance how the pupils were 
progressing in their school work and when they were ready 
for promotion. 

The Record of a Child of Average Mentality 

Figure 8 shows the record of an eleven-year-old girl of 
about average mentahty. Her mental age (M.A.) was 
eleven years, seven months, and her intelligence quotient 
(I.Q.) was 105. Hence she is a little above the average in 
intelligence. Her graph, resulting from the September 
tests and represented by the dotted line in Figure 8, falls 
about equally above and below the fourth-grade line. 
That is, she averaged about fourth-grade (end of year) 
ability in the tested subjects at the beginning of the school 
year. Hence she was placed in the class that was be- 
ginning fifth-grade work, namely, the fifth grade according 
to the plan discussed in chapter iv. The dashed line 



56 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

represents the scores of the same child from the February 
tests and the solid line those from the June tests. The 
progress of the child in her studies is shown by the higher 
levels of the graphs for the later tests. Only two subjects 
show little or no increase and those will be explained a 
little farther on. 

Reading. Let us consider separately the progress made 
by this pupil in each subject, beginning with reading. I 
depend mainly on Monroe's test for measuring silent- 
reading ability. It is well standardized, perfectly ob- 
jective, eliminates the memory factor, and is, to my mind, 
best fitted for my particular scheme. The pupil's score 
for rate of silent reading in September was 80. The first 
point, therefore, on the September curve was plotted at 
the intersection of the fourth-grade line with the test line, 
80 being the fourth-grade standard score as shown on the 
card. Her score for comprehension was 17, which is half- 
way between the standard scores for the fourth and fifth 
grades. Hence the second point on the September graph 
is located halfway between the fourth- and fifth-grade 
lines. Now note the space between the two points just 
located and the corresponding points on the dashed curve. 
This space shows the progress made by the pupil in silent 
reading during the first half of the school year in relation 
to normal annual progress represented by the distance 
between the two grade lines. The advance in rate of read- 
ing is particularly marked, covering as it does the space of 
a grade and a quarter in a half-year. The advance made 
in comprehension is normal; that is, a haK-grade of prog- 
ress in a half-year of work. 

As shown by the corresponding points on the solid-line 
curve, the pupil's rate of reading increased very little 
during the last half of the year, while progress in ability to 
comprehend what was read continued to be normal. The 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 57 

rapid increase in rate of reading was undoubtedly due to 
the special emphasis placed on efficient silent-reading drill 
which was inaugurated in the fall term and continued 
throughout the year. There had never before been any 
such drill in any of the schools. For the year, this child's 
progress was a grade and a half, or fifty per cent above 
normal, in rate of reading and just a grade, or normal, in 
comprehension. 

Arithmetic. On the addition line, note the drop of the 
February curve below the one for September. There 
might be several reasons for this, the most plausible being 
that the child was tired or not feeling well at the time that 
particular test was given in February. This surmise is 
supported by the fact that she " came back " strong in the 
June tests and showed a half -grade of progress for the year 
in addition ability. 

Little progress was shown in subtraction ability; none 
at all for the first half of the year. But you will note that 
she was already up to fifth grade in both subtraction and 
addition at the beginning of the year. When a child's 
graph shows that he is well up to or above grade in any 
subject, the time and effort of that child is diverted to 
some subject in which he is below grade. One of the chief 
values of the tests is their diagnostic value in showing up 
the weak and strong places in the work of pupils or classes 
so that the teacher and superintendent may know where 
their efforts should be concentrated in order to bring about 
results as nearly uniform as possible. The tendency of the 
graphs to flatten out and more nearly approximate a 
straight line toward the end of the year is the direct result 
of this policy of placing the emphasis where it is most 
needed, the places where it is most needed being indicated 
by the earlier graphs. The ideal curve would, of course, 
be a straight line, denoting ability exactly equal to the 



58 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



grade norms in all subjects. And an ideal year's record 
for a fifth-grade pupil would be three straight hnes, the 
first coincident with the fourth-grade line on the card, the 



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THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 59 

third coincident with the fifth-grade line, and the second 
midway between and parallel to the others. Such a 
record would denote absolutely even and normal progress 
for the year. 

One of the tests given in the fall was the Cleveland Sur- 
vey Test in the fundamental operations of arithmetic — ■ 
a test which is excellent for purposes of diagnosis. This 
test showed this particular pupil to be especially weak in 
the multiplication and division of fractions, decimals, and 
denominate numbers. Special corrective drill on these 
phases of arithmetic was responsible for the splendid 
progress shown on the multiplication and division lines. 

Note the very low score made in the mixed fundamentals 
test in September, the excellent progress made during the 
year, and the fact that in spite of such progress the pupil 
failed to come up to grade at the end of the year. It is 
noteworthy that only eight pupils in the whole district 
have so far succeeded in getting as high grades in this test 
as they averaged in the four fundamental operations, 
although the test is made up of a mixture of the identical 
examples used in the addition, subtraction, multiplication, 
and division tests. Most of them fall below from half a 
grade to a whole grade. A study of Figures 9, 10, and 11 
reveals the same facts concerning the results from this test. 
Although good progress is made in every case, the pupil or 
class persistently grades lower in this test than in the 
others on fundamentals of arithmetic. To my mind this 
indicates that the standard scores for this test are too 
high. 

Continuing the examination of Figure 8, we find Mon- 
roe's Reasoning Test in Arithmetic to be the next in order. 
This test is scored for three things: rate of solving prob- 
lems, solutions correct in principle, and correct answers. 
Good progress is shown for the year in all three although 



6o STANDARDIZED TESTS 

the pupil fails to reach the grade standard for speed in 
solving problems. 

Spelling. In spelling ability the pupil accomplished 
twenty-five per cent more than a normal year's progress, 
with nearly four times as great progress made in the last 
half of the year as in the first half. And here is a chance 
for some more interesting comparisons of the graphs on 
the different cards. Figure 9 shows no progress in spelling 
in the first half; Figure 10 shows the same; while Figure 11, 
which is the record of a whole fifth grade, shows consider- 
ably more progress in the last half than in the first. The 
midyear tests revealed the fact that speUing work in 
general was progressing unsatisfactorily. As remedial 
measures, oral speUing drill, together with Buckwalter's 
Comprehensive Speller, was thrown into the discard. 
Ayres's Spelling Scale, supplemented by individual spell- 
ing lists made up of troublesome words from the pupils' 
own written vocabularies, was made the basis of the spell- 
ing course. A little booklet containing graded lists of 
1600 " Common Blunder Words " was also used in most 
of the schools. Spelling lessons were shortened; new 
words were presented by a more psychological method; 
and the recitation consisted of a written lesson wherein 
the pupils use the words of the day's lesson in sentences 
or in a short composition. The efficacy of these changes in 
subject matter and method is strikingly evidenced by the 
greatly increased progress during the last half of the year. 

Handwriting. Next comes handwriting. This pupil's 
scores in writing (Figure 8) are typical of the general condi- 
tions revealed by the tests as discussed in chapter v; speed 
scores up to or much above grade and quality scores very 
low. Although this pupil showed considerable progress 
for the year, she failed to reach the grade standard in qual- 
ity of handwriting. But she did better than most of the 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 6i 

pupils in this respect. Note that, throughout the year, 
her speed decreased while her quaHty increased. In the 
past, speed had been attained at the expense of quality. 
Now quality has been gained at the sacrifice of speed, and 
yet speed has not been reduced below the grade standard. 
Figure 9 also shows the fact that quality improved at the 
expense of speed. In most other cases, however, speed 
increased at approximately the same rate as quality, and 
the pupils were about as far behind in writing at the end of 
the year as they were at the beginning. All four of the 
records presented in this chapter show an improvement in 
handwriting for the year considerably above the average 
for the district. In general the improvement in writing 
abihty was small. The reasons for the conditions found to 
exist at the beginning of the year and the general lack of 
progress during the year have already been discussed. 

English. As for language and grammar, so far as the 
author is aware, no satisfactory general test or scale has 
been standardized. One of our greatest needs at present 
in carrying out a complete testing program in the ele- 
mentary schools is a general language and grammar test 
somewhat on the same plan as the Hahn-Lackey Geogra- 
phy Scale. Starch's Punctuation Scale is good for measur- 
ing abihty in that particular. Charters Diagnostic Lan- 
guage and Grammar Tests are excellent as far as they go, 
and they cover pretty well the common errors in the use of 
the EngHsh language. But no standards were available 
for them last year, so that they did not fit into a scheme 
which required tests that have been fairly well standard- 
ized.^ Hence we could do Httle in testing language and 
grammar ability last year. The two tests used, namely, 
Greene's Enghsh Organization Test and Thorndike's 

1 Standard scores for these tests are now available and we are using them as a 
part of our testing program. 



62 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Visual Vocabulary Test might perhaps more properly be 
placed under the head of reading. The English Organiza- 
tion Test proved rather unsatisfactory. It does not seem 
to measure any definite ability. Its chief value seems to 
be in indicating, to some extent, a pupil's general intelli- 
gence or general reasoning ability, if there is such a thing, 
and even in this I have not found it to agree very well with 
the results of regular intelligence tests. 

The vocabulary test, however, has proved very valuable, 
especially in interpreting silent reading scores. There is a 
high degree of correlation between the scores in the vocab- 
ulary test and those of comprehension in silent reading if 
the scores of children much below normal are thrown out. 
When a normal child fails in comprehension of silent read- 
ing, an examination of his vocabulary scores will often 
show a serious lack of word knowledge, which can be reme- 
died by a definite plan of vocabulary building. To such a 
policy is due the excellent progress as regards vocabulary 
knowledge shown by the pupil represented in Figure 8. 
This progress is shown by the curves to be from fourth- 
grade ability in September to halfway betv/een fifth- and 
sixth-grade ability in June. Notice that this is also the 
highest point reached in the silent reading scores. This 
test likewise measures the efficiency of whatever method of 
vocabulary building may be adopted. 

Content subjects. Highly satisfactory in amount and 
uniformity was the progress in geography and history, as 
shown in Figures 8, 9, and 11, although for some reason 
the history scores persistently lagged behind those in 
geography. 

General progress. As before mentioned. Figure 8 is the 
record of a pupil a little above the average in intelligence 
and her record shows on the average, a little more than a 
normal year of progress; which is as it should be. Further- 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 63 

more, her progress was in the direction of a more uniform 
ability in all subjects. The June curve is 35 per cent 
shorter than the September curve as shown in Figure 12 
(a), thus approaching much nearer the ideal curve. This 
fact exemplifies the value of corrective measures based on 
diagnosis by standardized tests. 

These records are also used for promotion purposes. 
When a child's graph has moved upward over a space ap- 
proximately equal to the distance between two grade lines 
he is ready to be promoted to the next grade. As before 
stated, the pupil whose record is shown in Figure 8 was 
started on fifth-grade work at the beginning of the school 
year. Her graph has moved upward, as shown by the 
solid-line curve, until it averages better than fifth grade. 
This shows that she had attained fifth-grade end-of-the- 
year standards in June and was ready for promotion to the 
sixth grade and to begin work in that grade the following 
September. 

The Recoio) of a Bright Child 

Figure 9 shows the record of a very bright eleven-year- 
old girl with a mental age of fifteen years and an I.Q. of 
135. Although her graph showed an average of sixth- 
grade ability at the beginning of the year, it was consid- 
ered wisest, because of her youth and because of various 
changes in the course of study, to have her take the regular 
sixth-grade work for that year and to prepare herself for 
double promotion by taking part of the seventh-grade 
work. Her chart shows a progress of from half a grade in 
rate of silent reading and spelling to two and a half grades 
in multipHcation. In the June tests, as shown by the 
solid-line curve, she averaged halfway between seventh- 
and eighth-grade standards and was promoted to the 
eighth grade. Whatever of seventh-grade work she did 



64 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



not take along with the sixth-grade work, she will take up 
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THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 



65 



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66 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

The Record of a Dull Child 

Figure io gives the record of a very dull boy with a 
chronological age of thirteen years, a mental age of nine 
years ten months, and an I.Q. of 76. Note the great 
irregularity of the September curve and the general lack 
of progress throughout the year. Note that in many 
instances the scores of later tests fall below those of previ- 
ous ones, and that the reading scores are much lower than 
the vocabulary scores indicating that poor reading may be 
due to lack of native ability and not to lack of word 
knowledge. This boy fell so far short of reaching fourth- 
grade standards in the June tests that he was not promoted 
to the fifth grade. He was already two years retarded. 
Question: Did we do right in retarding this child another 
year? Problem: What to do with cases of this kind in 
rural schools where special classes are out of the question, 
where manual trade schools are beyond the reach of the 
pupils, when promotion means placing the pupil wholly 
out of his depth, and when retardation means discourage- 
ment. This boy will probably never get beyond the 
fourth or fifth grade except through mistaken charity. 
Would it not be well to have some provision whereby sach 
hopelessly retarded children could be permitted to leave 
school and engage in some useful and profitable work under 
the guidance of parents or other responsible persons, at 
least until society becomes sufficiently civilized to make 
provision at public expense for the proper training of such 
individuals? They would at least be saved from forming 
habits of failure and idleness which so many such children 
acquire during years of forced attendance at school after 
they have reached the limits of their mental capacities in 
acquiring knowledge from books. Figure 12 (c) shows the 
relative lengths of this pupil's September and June curves. 



THE PROGRESS OF PUPILS 



67 



It should be remembered that all three of the pupils whose 
records we have been discussing were taught by the same 
teacher and no doubt in much the same way. 



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STANDARDIZED TESTS 



The Record of a Class 

Figure ii is the record of a fifth grade containing nine 
pupils. It shows that the entire grade has made normal 
progress or better in nearly every test. As usual, how- 
ever, the class is weak in quality of handwriting. It is 
also slightly below grade in arithmetical reasoning, in 
mixed fundamentals, in spelhng, and in geography. On 

Percent 



(a) Sept. 
June 

(b) Sept. 
June 

(c) Sept. 
June 

(d) Sept. 
June 


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Fig. 12. A Comparison of the Lengths of September and June 
Curves as Shown in Figures 8 to 11 



the other hand, the class is considerably above standard 
in reading, in the fundamentals of arithmetic, in speed of 
writing, and in language and grammar. On the whole it 
shows that both teachers and pupils have done excellent 
work throughout the year. Relative lengths of Septem- 
ber and June curves are shown in Figure 12 {d). The June 
curve is about twenty per cent shorter than the September 
curve. 



CHAPTER VII 

MEASURING THE EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 
BY STANDARDIZED TESTS 

In chapter vi I told how we used standardized tests and 
scales to measure the progress of pupils and to tell when 
they were ready for promotion. In this chapter I shall 
shov\^ how, at the same time, we were measuring the ability 
of the teachers to get results. 

Factors in Teaching Ability 

Besides knowledge of subject-matter, one may recognize 
five main factors in a teacher's efficiency: (i) managing 
ability; (2) natural aptitude for the work; (3) method and 
technique of teaching; (4) interest and industry in her 
work; and (5) that vague thing, personality, somewhat 
indefinable, but generally admitted to include character, 
temperament, pejsonal appearance, manners, tact, etc. 
A teacher must demonstrate ability to organize and man- 
age a school in an orderly manner before any of her other 
abilities can do their work. With all the other factors 
present, a teacher's success can be but m^ediocre if she 
lacks greatly in natural ability as applied to teaching. 
She may have all the other virtues, but if she lacks enthu- 
siasm and industry she cannot inspire her pupils; and 
without an efficient method her other qualities will be 
ineffective. Finally, her personal qualities, ideals, and 
conduct must be worthy of emulation if she expects to 
influence properly the social and moral life of her pupils. 

Measuring Teaching Eeficiency by Results 

Now no one of these factors can be accurately and objec- 
tively measured independently of all the others; but they 



70 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

all function cooperatively in getting results — results 
which are manifested in the development of knowledge, 
skill, and ideals among pupils. And many of these results 
can be measured by means of standardized tests. 

Is it not customary to measure the efficiency of the 
workman, professional or otherwise, by the amount and 
quality of the work he turns out? The efficiency of the 
wood-chopper is gauged by the number of cords of wood 
he can chop in a definite length of time; of a bricklayer, 
by the number of bricks he can lay in a day; of a farmer, 
by the per-acre yield and profit of his crops; of the lawyer, 
by the per cent of cases he wins for his clients; of the 
doctor, by the proportion of cases he cures; and so on, 
for almost any line of human endeavor we could mention. 
Experience has set certain standards of achievement in 
every kind of work and the efficiency of the worker is 
judged by the ratio of his product to these standards. If 
he does only three fourths as much as the standard, he is 
only seventy-five per cent efficient. 

Then why should not the efficiency of teachers be meas- 
ured by the amount of work they turn out? Too long has 
efficiency been taken for granted or, at best, left to the 
judgment of supervisors making guesses based on class- 
room observation, more or less perfunctory, of teachers' 
good looks, engaging personalities, show of energy and 
enthusiasm, evidence of preparation, handling of super- 
visor's pet methods, etc. Although such observation is 
not without value in helping to secure a fair estimate of a 
teacher's ability, it does not alone furnish a safe and sane 
basis for judgment; and any teacher so judged to be ineffi- 
cient has a right to complain of unfairness of treatment. 
Judgments based on mere classroom observation are not 
fair either to the teachers or the taxpayers. The reasons 
why this is so have already been summarized, but they 
will bear repeating here. 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 71 

(i) Such observations do not furnish a sound basis for 
judgment; (2) the superintendent's opinions are quite apt 
to be colored by personal prejudices toward an individual 
teacher or her methods; (3) classes often shov/ at their 
worst in the presence of visitors; (4) even the teacher may- 
fail to do herself justice under the critical eye of the super- 
intendent; and (5) classroom observation takes no account 
of the actual results the teacher may be getting. Further- 
more, such observation is not only unfair, but inaccurate. 
It is inaccurate because of all the reasons just given, and 
because (a) some teachers do excellent work when the 
superintendent is present and shirk all the rest of the 
time, and because (b) if such teachers do their own testing, 
even the results may be made falsely to appear satis- 
factory. 

If the education of a child consists in his acquiring cer- 
tain knowledge, skills, habits, and ideals that will make 
him a useful and desirable member of the society in which 
he lives, and if teaching is the proper leading and directing 
of the child in utilizing his natural abilities to acquire these 
things with the least possible expenditure of time and 
energy, then why is it not eminently fair to all concerned 
to gauge the teacher's efficiency by measuring at definite 
intervals the progress her pupils are making in the acquisi- 
tion of the prescribed knowledge, skills, habits, and ideals, 
provided we have well-defined standards of achievement 
for each grade such as the standardized tests furnish? 

Anyway, I put the question squarely up to the teachers 
of my district at one of the teachers' meetings held early 
in the year. They were asked to decide whether they 
would prefer to have the superintendent estimate their 
efficiency on the basis of what classroom observation he 
could make in schools so widely scattered, or according to 
the progress made by their pupils as measured by stand- 
ardized tests. 



72 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Objections of Teachers to Rating by Results 

As I had expected, the question evoked a Hvely discussion 
and some well-founded objections were raised. Most of 
the teachers were ready to admit the inaccuracy and 
unfairness of ordinary methods of rating teachers, but 
insisted that there was a large probabiKty of the same 
weaknesses in the plan I proposed. Their chief objections 
were: (i) that knowing they would be judged by the results 
of the tests, some teachers would be tempted to cheat in 
giving the tests, thereby perhaps gaining a higher rating 
than would better and more conscientious teachers who 
gave the tests honestly; (2) that since there are in most 
schools a sprinkling of mentally deficient or even feeble- 
minded children v/ho under the most efficient teacher 
cannot be expected to make normal progress, the records 
of such pupils, when averaged with those of normal chil- 
dren, would seriously and unjustly lower the rating of 
the teachers; and (3) that of two teachers of equal abihty 
one might have a school whose pupils averaged so much 
higher in intelligence than those of the other that she 
would undeservedly obtain a much higher rating. The 
majority thought that, if these principal objections could 
be satisfactorily disposed of, the plan would be worth 
trying. The fev/ teachers who displayed marked lack of 
interest in the subject had already on other grounds shown 
themselves to be of the time-serving variety. I therefore 
ignored their attitude. But I wanted the intelligent 
acquiescence of the better teachers in some sort of a 
reliable teacher-rating scheme. 

The Objections Answered 

The first two objections I had foreseen and prepared for. 
As to the first, I explained that most of the tests were 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 73 

furnished in two or three different forms, so that the same 
forms would not have to be given twice in the same year. 
This would obviate the possibility of any teacher drilling 
pupils on the exact contents of a test, drill along the 
general lines of work suggested by the tests being not only 
legitimate but desirable. Furthermore, I pointed out 
that my plan of checking the work of the teachers in 
giving the tests would ensure the immediate discovery of 
any serious attempt at cheating on the part of dishonestly 
inclined teachers — such as allowing more than the 
allotted time for each test or giving illegitimate aid to the 
pupils during the tests. This plan was for me to repeat 
in each school one or two of the tests after the teachers had 
given them all. Then if there was any great discrepancy 
between the results of the tests I had given and those a 
teacher had given, such discrepancy would indicate either 
dishonesty or gross carelessness in giving the tests. 

The second objection offered a good opportunity for a 
discussion of intelligence tests and their uses. I passed 
around some samples of the Otis Group Intelligence Test 
and explained how, by the use of such tests, we could 
locate the pupils who were mentally incapable of making 
normal progress. The progress records of these pupils 
could be thrown out in calculating the teachers' ratings, 
and we might use only the records of pupils who graded 
eighty per cent of normal or better by the intelligence tests. 

The third objection was one which had not before 
occurred to me. I suggested that we leave the matter 
until our next meeting by which time I hoped to have a 
satisfactory solution. 

The Plan of Rating Teachers 

The plan I finally worked out and which was accepted 
as satisfactory by the teachers follows: From the results 



74 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

of the June tests the average scores by grades for each 
test were to be calculated for each school. Each of these 
average grade scores was to be divided by the correspond- 
ing standard score, thus giving the per cent which each 
grade score was of normal. 

Table VII illustrates the method by which these per 
cents for each grade were obtained. The figures opposite 
the pupils' numbers are the rate and comprehension scores 
in reading for a fifth grade in the June tests. 

All grade per cents similarly derived for each school 
were to be averaged to give the teacher's percentage mark- 
Then, to offset the differences in intelligence between 
schools, if the average of the I.Q.'s in a school was less 
than loo, the difference between it and loo was to be 
added to the teacher's mark, and if the average of the 
I.Q.'s was more than loo, the difference was to be sub- 
tracted from the teacher's mark. This procedure served 
in the one case to discount the part of a school's progress 
that was due to superior native intelligence and in the 
other case to give the teacher an allowance to offset her 
school's mental disabihties. This plan disposed of the 
third objection mentioned above. Its accuracy, of course, 
depends in large part on the degree of correlation between 
the scores in intelligence tests and the scores in achieve- 
ment tests. That the correlation is high will be shown in a 
subsequent chapter. This scheme does away with the 
necessity of discarding the scores of subnormal children in 
calculating the ratings of teachers, although such discard- 
ing would save considerable work without materially 
affecting results. 

First Illustration of the Plan 

Below are given concrete illustrations of how the ratings 
of several teachers were obtained at the end of the year. 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 75 

The first two are both very competent and successful 
teachers. In A's school the average of the I.Q/s of all the 
pupils was 88. This school had thirty- two pupils, four 
of whom graded as feeble-minded. Twenty of them had 
I.Q.'s of less than 90. Only five had I.Q.'s over 100, and 

TABLE VII. JUNE SCORES OF A FIFTH GRADE IN READING 

Pupil Rate Comprehension 

number 

1 108 26 

2 98 20 

3 73 14 

4 8s 19 

5 loi 25 

6 95 21 

7 50 8 

8 105 20 

Average 89 . 4 19 , i 

Standard 93 20 

Per cent average score 

is of standard 96 . i 95 . 5 

the highest was 122. In B's school, consisting of thirty 
pupils, the average of the I.Q.'s was in. The intelli- 
gence level in this school was unusually high, just as in 
the other it was unusually low. There were no feeble- 
minded children, and only one pupil graded as very dull. 
Eighty-three per cent of the pupils were normal or above. 
Three had I.Q.'s above 140.^ 

Table VIII gives the grade per cents (computed as 
shown in Table VII) on each test in A's school — also the 
general average for the whole school. The 78, for instance, 
at the top of the second-grade column in Table VIII means 
that the second-grade average score in rate of silent read- 
ing was 78 per cent of the second-grade standard score. 

^ All intelligence tests were given, corrected, and scored by the superintendent. 



76 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



TABLE VIII. GRADE PER CENTS ON EACH TEST — 
TEACHER A 



Subjects 



Grades 



II 



III IV 



VI VII VIII 



Silent Reading 

Rate 

Comprehension 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Mixed Fundamentals . . 
Arithmetical Reasoning 

Spelling 

Writing 

Speed 

Quality 

English Organization . . 
Visual Vocabulary . . . . 

Geography 

History 

Grade averages 



78 
69 

85 
93 
93 
74 
72 

82 

96 
67 



81 
77 
87 
91 
92 

79 
76 
70 
80 

102 
68 
92 
83 



86 
80 
92 
93 
97 
82 

77 
73 
80 

lOI 

67 

94 
84 
82 

78 



90 
80 
92 
92 
93 
87 
80 

78 
77 

104 

65 
92 
81 
80 
72 



93 
78 
94 
93 
98 
92 
82 
81 
83 

III 
62 

88 
77 
85 
82 



99 
85 
96 

98 
98 
95 
91 
88 
86 

107 
62 

94 
86 
89 
84 



98 
84 
98 
98 
100 

97 
93 
87 
87 

109 
65 
93 
89 
92 
90 



80.9 



82.9 



84.4 



84.2 



86.6 



90-5 



92.0 



General average, 86.3. 

In comprehension of silent reading the second-grade 
average score was only 69 per cent of the standard score; 
and so on for each subject and for each grade. There are 
qS of these per cents in the table. The general average for 
the school was obtained by adding all of them and divid- 
ing the sum by 98. The general average in this school was 
86.3 per cent, which means that the average achievement 
of the school, as measured by the standardized tests, was 
S6.^ per cent of normal. Table IX gives the same data 
for B's school. In this case the general average was 108.4 
per cent of normal. 
Then, according to the rating plan described above: 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 77 

A's ratings = General average for A's school + (100 — 
Av. I.Q.) = 86.3 + (100 - S8) = 98.3. And B's rating 
= General average for B's school — (Av. I.Q. — 100) = 
108.4 — (hi — 100) = 974. 

TABLE IX. GRADE PER CENTS ON EACH TEST — 
TEACHER B 



Subjects 



Grades 



II III IV 



VI VII VIII 



Reading 

Rate 

Comprehension 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Mixed Fundamentals . . 
Arithmetical Reasoning 

Spelling. 

Writing 

Speed 

Quality 

English Organization . . 

Visual Vocabulary 

Geography 

History . 

Grade averages . . . . 



102 

93 
107 

114 

114 

96 

94 

104 

118 

89 



los 

lOI 

109 
112 
113 

lOI 

98 
92 

102 

124 

90 

114 

106 



III 

104 

114 

114 

118 

104 
99 
95 

102 

123 
89 
116 
103 
104 
96 



114 

104 
114 

"3 
114 
109 
102 
99 
99 

126 
87 
114 
108 
102 
95 



117 
102 
116 

114 
119 
114 
104 
104 
105 

123 
84 
116 
108 
III 
106 



123 
109 
118 
119 
119 
117 

113 
no 
109 

129 

84 

116 

IDS 

III 

107 



122 
108 
120 
119 
121 
119 

115 
109 
108 

131 

86 

113 
III 
114 
109 



103. 1 



105.1 



106. 1 



106.7 



109.5 



112. 6 



II3-7 



General average, 108.4. 



These are the ratings of two teachers of undoubted 
ability, but with schools widely varying in average intelli- 
gence and rate of progress. Yet the ratings show the 
teachers to be of about equal ability. 

The difference in achievement in the two schools is 
due to difference in the average mentality of the pupils. 
It would be eminently unfair to expect equal results with 
the two schools, or to rate A as a poorer teacher than B 



78 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



because performance in A's school was less than that in 
B's school. 

Second Illustration of the Plan 

Now let us consider the cases of two teachers of widely 
different ability, but with schools approximately equal in 
size and in the average inteUigence of pupils. Teacher C 
is a normal-school graduate with several years' experience, 
but with apparently little aptitude for or interest in the 
work — a teacher who tries to teach as she was taught 
regardless of her professional training. Teacher D is 
an enthusiastic girl of twenty years who had had one sum- 
mer term at normal school and one year's experience. 

TABLE X. GRADE PER CENTS ON EACH TEST — 
TEACHER C 



Subjects 



Grades 



II 


III 


IV 


VI 


VII 


80 


84 


88 


92 


95 


75 


81 


80 


85 


90 


84 


85 


90 


91 


94 


92 


90 


89 


96 


95 


90 


89 


94 


90 


96 


78 


8S 


80 


82 


88 


73 


74 


75 


78 


84 




70 


74 


79 


82 


78 


75 


80 


81 


89 


87 


92 


93 


98 


lOI 


67 


70 


65 


65 


58 




90 


90 


95 


95 




85 


82 


79 


76 






83 


87 


90 






76 


82 


80 


80.4 


82.3 


82.6 


85.3 


87.S 



Reading 

Rate 

Comprehension 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Mixed Fundamentals . . 
Arithmetical Reasoning 

Spelling 

Writing 

Speed 

Quality 

English Organization . , 

Visual Vocabulary 

Geography, 

History 

Grade averages 



General average, 83.9 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 79 

Apparently she got more out of her summer session than 
many do out of the whole course. Moreover, she has the 
ability to adapt her knowledge to classroom use. 

Tables X and XI give for the schools of C and D respec- 
tively the same kind of data as Tables VIII and IX did 
for the schools of A and B. 

TABLE XI. GRADE PER CENTS ON EACH TEST — 
TEACHER D 



Subjects 



Grades 



II 



IV 



VI 



VII 



VIII 



Reading 

Rate 

Comprehension 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Mixed Fundamentals . . 
Arithmetical Reasoning 

Spelling 

Writing 

Speed 

Quality 

English Organization . . 

Visual Vocabulary 

Geography 

History 

Grade averages 



95 

86 

100 

107 

107 

89 

87 

97 

III 

82 



98 

94 
102 

105 
106 

94 
91 
85 
95 

117 

83 
109 
98 
97 
93 



103 

97 
107 
107 
III 

97 
92 
88 
95 

1x6 
82 

107 
99 
95 
87 



107 

97 
107 
106 
107 
102 

95 
92 
92 

119 
80 

107 
96 

104 
99 



96.1 



97.8 



98.9 



100.7 



no 

95 
109 

107 

112 

107 

97 

97 

98 

116 

77 
109 

lOI 

103 
95 



102.2 



General average, 99 . 3 



The average of I.Q.'s for C's school was 98.8 and that 
for D's school was 102.2. This is a slight advantage for 
D's school, but not nearly enough to account for the 
difference in attainment in the two schools. Calculated 
as before, 



8o STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Cs rating = 83.9 + (100 - 98.8) = 85.1 
And D's rating = 99.3 - (102.2 - 100) == 97.1 

Here again the relative efficiency of the teachers is 
reflected in the respective ratings of their schools when full 
cognizance is taken of the average intelligence of the two 
schools. 

We use averages rather than medians in computing the 
ratings of teachers because the schools are small with few 
pupils in a grade. In larger schools with twenty or more 
pupils to a grade the median scores could be as well used 
in figuring grade per cents. In such case one should not 
neglect to use median I.Q.'s as well as median scores. 
And it might be well to mention here that when the scores 
of subnormal children are thrown out of the reckoning 
their I.Q's should be discarded also; otherwise the teach- 
er's rating would be considerably raised. 

Although, of course, this rating does not include every- 
thing that should be taken into account in estimating a 
teacher's worth to the school and to the community, it 
nevertheless covers one of the most important factors to be 
considered and furnishes a fairly objective test by means 
of which on occasion a teacher can be convinced of her 
own inefficiency. Certainly if a teacher fails seriously in 
this phase of her work, she cannot profitably be kept on 
the pay-roll for the sake of her personal appearance, good 
moral influence, managing ability, or any other factor 
or factors that go to make up a good teacher. 

Salary and Rating 
In addition to a substantial general raise in salaries 
throughout the district for the current year, the school 
boards were persuaded to grant special increases of one or 
two dollars per week to certain teachers who rated ninety- 
five per cent or better with ratings calculated as described. 



MEASURING EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 8i 

None of the teachers who failed to get such a raise made 
any complaint of favoritism, nor could they consistently 
do so, since they had themselves accepted the basis on 
which their ratings were determined. Furthermore, the 
teachers are working this year with the understanding that 
they will receive bonuses at the end of the year of five 
dollars for every whole unit that they increase their ratings 
over those of last year, the bonus not to exceed fifty dol- 
lars. Thus, if a teacher's rating last June was 89.2 and 
next June it has increased to 94.4, she will have increased 
her rating five whole units. Hence she will receive a bonus 
of twenty-five dollars. I know that most of the teachers 
are working hard for a bonus. 



CHAPTER VIII 

COMPARING THE EFFICIENCY OF SPECIAL 

TEACHING METHODS BY MEANS 

OF STANDARDIZED TESTS 

In the last chapter five principal factors in a teacher's 
efficiency were distinguished — namely, (i) managing 
ability, (2) natural aptitude, (3) method of teaching, (4) 
interest and industry, and (5) personaUty. The position 
was taken that no one of these five factors can be accu- 
rately and objectively measured independently of any or 
all of the other factors. 

Although method was one of the factors mentioned, we 
nevertheless now propose to measure the efficiency of 
methods. Note, however, that we do not propose to do so 
independently of the other factors. 

The Teacher and the Method 

In general the efficiency of a teacher and the efficiency of 
her methods are pretty much inseparable. It is a mooted 
question whether or not there can be a good teacher with- 
out good teaching methods. We hear it argued, for 
example, that a good teacher with a poor method will 
accomplish more than a poor teacher with a good method. 
This argument implies that good teachers using poor 
methods may secure better results than poor teachers 
using good methods, in the same way that a good carpenter 
with few and poor tools can do a better job than can the 
novice with the best and most complete set of tools obtain- 
able. We must admit that there is much truth in the 
argument. Sometimes we find that a teacher who is 
ignorant of approved methods, but who has great natural 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 83 

ability, is obtaining better results than another teacher 
who is without natural aptitude, but who, perhaps with all 
the advantages of professional training, is using, or rather 
misusing, the most approved modern methods. One has 
the true teaching instinct and ability to apply general 
principles and the other lacks these advantages. 

Whatever may be the actual relations between good and 
poor teachers and good and poor methods, we can all agree, 
I think, that the best teachers are those who combine 
natural aptitude with thorough knowledge of up-to-date 
methods together with skill in applying them so as to 
realize their possibilities. And although we cannot meas- 
ure the efficiency of a teacher's methods entirely apart 
from consideration of her general ability, there is a way, 
nevertheless, by which we can, with the help of standard- 
ized tests, obtain fairly accurate comparisons of the effi- 
ciency of various special methods, taking at the same time 
full cognizance of the teacher's general ability. 

Eliminating the Variables 

This can be done somewhat as we solve simultaneous 
equations in algebra — that is, by manipulating the 
various quantities so as to eliminate all but one of the 
unknowns. The value of the remaining unknown is 
readily found after the others are equalized so as to cancel 
each other. Yet it cannot be said that the eliminated 
quantities are ignored. The manipulations required to 
bring about the conditions suitable for their elimination 
give them their full force in evaluating the result. 

And so, if we are to find the relative values of two or 
more special teaching methods, we must equalize as far as 
possible the conditions under which those methods are 
tried out, thus eliminating all the unknown quantities but 
one. The chief of these external conditions that would 



84 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

affect the accuracy of our results are the general ability of 
the teachers, the average mental abilities of the several 
groups of pupils, and the time devoted to class work with 
the method. 

Two Ways of Comparing Methods; the First Case 

Illustrated 

Now there are two ways in which we may want to compare 
methods. We may want to discover which of two or more 
special methods of teaching a subject will give the best 
results when used by teachers of equal general ability, or 
we may want to learn which of two or more special meth- 
ods can be used to best advantage by a certain teacher. 

To illustrate the first case, suppose we wanted to com- 
pare the results of drill in the fundamental operations of 
arithmetic as conducted in the usual more or less unor- 
ganized manner and without much regard for the special 
difficulties involved in definite types of examples, with 
results of drill in the same operations by means of the 
Courtis Standard Practice Tests. To do this we should 
first choose our teachers for the trial. Their general 
ability should be as nearly equal as possible in order to 
eliminate so far as may be any inaccuracy in our conclu- 
sions due to differences in ability. Two teachers with 
approximately equal ratings by the method described in 
the last chapter would serve admirably. One should have 
had no experience with, and if possible no knowledge of, 
the Courtis Practice Tests or of similar practice material, 
while the other should have had experience in their use 
and knowledge of their basic principles. It would not do 
to have the same teacher try to handle both methods 
because, on the one hand, if she had had experience with 
the practice tests, the defects of the haphazard procedure 
would be largely nullified by her knowledge of the prin- 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 85 

ciples underlying them; while, on the other hand, if she 
did not have such knowledge and experience, the advan- 
tages of the Courtis method would in some measure be lost. 

The next step is to choose two groups of pupils. These 
groups should be neither too large nor too small; neither 
large enough to be cumbersome to handle as a class nor 
small enough to make average scores meaningless. From 
ten or twelve to twenty in a group is probably about right. 
The pupils in both groups should be in the same grade 
and the average mental ages and average intelligence 
quotients of the two groups should be as nearly equal as 
possible. The pupil's mental ages and intelligence quo- 
tients are obtained, of course, by means of intelligence 
tests, some uses of which will be discussed in the next 
chapter. 

As soon as the pupils have been selected, they should be 
carefully tested by means of standardized tests in the fun- 
damentals, and their scores should be recorded. The 
testing of both groups and the scoring of the papers should 
be done by the same person, preferably a person experi- 
enced in such work. The period of drill should begin as 
soon as the tests have been given. Care should be taken to 
see that, in each group, exactly the same amount of time 
is devoted to drill in the fundamental operations each day. 
At the end of eight or ten weeks the tests should be given 
again, the scores recorded, and the progress of the two 
groups compared. The difference in progress of the two 
groups will approximate the difference in efficiency of the 
two methods. 

The degree of accuracy of the results will depend upon 
the care with which the tests are given and the degree to 
which the conditions of the drill work are equalized. It is 
an open question whether or not the teachers themselves 
should be informed of the main purpose in view — that is. 



86 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

the purpose of comparing the efficiency of the two methods. 
If we could be perfectly sure that both teachers would be 
thoroughly interested and honest about the experiment, 
it would undoubtedly be wise to seek their intelHgent 
cooperation, since by so doing we should be more likely to 
get the best possible results from both methods. But if, 
thinking that their reputations are at stake, one or both 
are likely to be tempted to stretch the time limit for 
daily drill or to persuade the pupils to drill themselves 
for speed and accuracy outside of class, then it will proba- 
bly be better to leave them in bhssful ignorance of the 
main plot, merely seeing to it that each teacher devotes 
the same amount of time to class drill in the fundamentals 
each day. In this way one can infer what each of the 
methods would accomphsh under everyday working con- 
ditions in the hands of equally competent teachers. If 
one is particularly desirous of getting the best results of 
which either method is capable, this purpose may perhaps 
be accomplished by asking each teacher separately to do 
her very best. 

An Experiment in Comparing Methods 

This particular problem was worked out in my district 
last year with rather interesting and fairly conclusive 
results. The Courtis Standard Practice Tests were not 
in use at that time in the district, but, wishing to introduce 
them the following September, I planned ahead to have 
the stage set for their appearance. That is, before the 
practice tests were introduced generally, I wanted if 
possible to prove definitely that better results could be 
accomplished by their use with less drudgery for both 
teachers and pupils. 

This was before the teachers' ratings had been computed 
as described in chapter vii. I did not therefore have this 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 87 

sort of guidance in selecting the teachers to carry out the 
experiment; but I did have the records of progress for 
each school as shown by the September and February tests. 

Wishing to secure as representative results as possible 
under the circumstances, I tried the experiment in each 
of three different towns. To handle the work with the 
practice tests one teacher in each town was selected who 
had shown interest and capability in adapting new ideas 
to classroom use and whose schools had made normal 
progress during the first half of the year. Five weeks 
before the end of the winter term these three teachers were 
furnished with the Courtis Standard Practice Tests, 
Teachers' Manuals, and Students' Practice Pads. I 
showed them how to use the tests, pointed out their 
advantages, and explained the principles underlying them. 
Then I told them that for special reasons of which they 
would be informed in due time, I was anxious to have 
them become as expert as possible in using the tests by 
the end of the term. They assured me that they would 
do their best and I believe they did. At any rate, they 
did exceedingly well. 

The other three teachers, one in each of the same towns, 
were chosen because their schools had also shown about 
normal progress for the first half of the year, and because 
of the further fact that they were all teachers of many 
years' experience, somewhat set in their ways and not 
taking kindly to new ideas, but withal hard-working, trust- 
worthy, and capable of doing very good work in their own 
ways. In other words, they were good old-fashioned 
teachers. 

The intelligence tests had been given by this time 
throughout the district, and I hastened to record all the 
mental ages and intelligence quotients for use in selecting 
the several groups of pupils. They were finally chosen 



88 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

according to the plan outlined above except that the grades 
in any one school were too small to permit groups of ten 
pupils to be selected from the same grade in such a way 
that the six groups would all average the same in both 
mental ages and intelligence quotients. However, the 
conditions regarding mental ages and intelligence quo- 
tients were strictly observed and allowed for. The lowest 
mental age in any group was ten years nine months and 
the highest was eleven years five months. The I.Q's 
ranged from 97 to 105. 

Using the Woody Scales for measuring the ability of 
pupils in the fundamental operations, I gave the first 
tests to the six picked groups during the first week of the 
spring term, and corrected and scored them myself, 
tabulating the average scores for each group in each 
subject as shown in Table XII, in the columns marked A. 
As I gave the tests to each group of pupils, I had a talk 
with their teacher, telHng her that for very important 
reasons I wanted her to see how much improvement she 
could bring about in that particular group during the 
ensuing twelve weeks by drilling the pupils together just 
fifteen minutes each day for speed and accuracy in the 
fundamental operations of arithmetic. The three teachers 
trained for the purpose were directed to use only the Cour- 
tis Standard Practice Tests for the drill, but to use them 
for all they were worth. None of the teachers had any 
inkling of the real object in view. Yet each one w^as 
keyed up to do her best after her own fashion. Every 
pupil in the six groups was promised a special holiday for 
not missing more than one day during the term. Peda- 
gogically, of course, this may have been questionable, 
but practically it proved very effective; and I hoped 
that the end would justify the means. At any rate, I 
know that a large majority of the pupils got their holiday. 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 89 



TABLE XII. AVERAGE SCORES IN THE WOODY SCALES 
(a) Groups not using Practice Tests 



Operation 


Group I 


Group 2 


Group J 


Averages 




A 


B 


A 


B 


A 


B 


A 


B 


Addition 


II. 6 
8.2 
8.5 
5.5 

21.0 


14.8 
10.6 
12.2 
8.5 
25.9 


12.0 
8.4 
8.3 
5.9 

21.0 


14.7 
10.3 
12.0 
8.0 
26. 1 


II. 8 

7.9 

8.1 

6.1 

22.2 


15. 1 
10.5 
12.4 
8.8 
27.0 


II. 8 
8.2 

S.3 

5.8 

21.4 


14.8 
10. 5 
12. 2 

8.4 
26.3 


Subtraction 


Multiplication 

Division 


Mixed Fundamentals. . 



(b) Groups using Practice Tests 






Operation 


Group 4 


Group 5 


Group 6 


Averages 




A 


B 


A 


B 


A 


B 


A 


B 


Addition 


II. 9 
8.1 
8.0 

5-4 
22.0 


16.0 
12.4 

15.3 

9.6 

29.0 


II. 7 
8.6 
9.0 
5-7 

19.5 


15-8 
12. 2 

iS-S 
10.2 
30.0 


II. 7 
8.0 
8.4 
5.8 

23.0 


16.3 
II. 9 
14.8 

9-3 
29.6 


II. 8 
8.2 
8.4 
5.6 

21.5 


16 


Subtraction 


12 2 


Multiplication 

Division 


15-2 

9-7 

29. S 


Mixed Fundamentals. . 



The work was supervised as closely as possible through- 
out the term. Neither from observation nor by question- 
ing pupils could I detect any evidence that the rules of the 
game were being disregarded by any of the teachers. At 
the end of twelve weeks the pupils were again tested by 
means of the Woody Scales. The average scores for each 
group were placed in the B columns of Table XII in such 
a way that each group's second score in each subject was 
opposite its first score in the same subject. According to 
the table, the average score of the pupils of group i on the 
first test in addition (column A) was 11,6. The score for 
the same group in the second addition test was 14.8 as 
shown in the first B column. The scores for the three 



90 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

groups which did not use the practice tests are average 
for both first and second tests and recorded in the fourth A 
and B columns, while in like manner the general averages 
for the three groups which used the practice tests are 
recorded in the last two columns of the table. 

It will be noted that, according to the A columns of the 
general averages, the two main groups, the first consisting 
of the three smaller groups in which the practice tests were 
not used, and the second, of the three groups in which they 
were used, started almost exactly even in the race as might 
be expected under the circumstances. The first score of 
both groups in addition was 11.8 and the first score in 
subtraction for each group was 8.2. The remaining first 
scores differed by but one or two tenths of a unit. But 
this correspondence is no longer apparent when the B 
columns of general averages are considered. The final 
scores of the group using the practice tests are seen to be 
considerably larger than those of the group not using them. 
The differences between the scores contained in the fourth 
and last B columns represent the difference in progress 
of the two main groups. 

The group of pupils drilled with the practice tests has 
all the best of the argument, the difference in progress 
being sufficiently great to prove conclusively considerable 
superiority for the Courtis method properly handled. 
On the whole, the improvement of all the groups was sur- 
prisingly large for a period of only twelve weeks. It 
amounted on the average to about a year of progress for 
the groups which did not use the practice tests and to 
about a year and three quarters for the group using the 
practice tests. This merely goes to show what can be 
accomplished by intensive work along definite lines when 
the interests of teachers and pupils have been thoroughly 
aroused. 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 91 

The Second Case: Comparing Methods when Used 
BY the Same Teacher 

Now to return to the second way in which we might want 
to compare special methods. Suppose we wish to learn 
which of two or three special methods will give the best 
results with a particular teacher. This is quite a different 
matter from measuring the relative efficiency of the 
methods themselves. Only in exceptional cases can 
methods be accurately compared when handled by the 
same teacher. For such a purpose the teacher must be 
equally skilled in the use of the methods to be compared 
and without prejudice in favor of any particular method. 
In particular she must have a thorough knowledge of the 
special advantages and disadvantages of each method and 
know how to minimize the latter and make the most of 
the former. In no other way could the methods be given 
a fair trial. Only an exceptionally well- trained and widely 
experienced teacher, with the impartial mind of a scien- 
tist seeking truth through experiment, could fulfill these 
conditions. Such teachers are not to be found in every 
school system. 

We know that quite often a method of teaching which 
has proved highly successful, when handled by its origina- 
tor or by teachers specially trained by him, has failed 
miserably when introduced into a school system where 
the teachers were trained and experienced in other 
methods. And such failure is not to be wondered at. 
When the mere form of a new method, without its spirit, 
is introduced among workers lacking a knowledge of the 
proper technique to accompany the method, and natu- 
rally prejudiced in favor of their own methods, the new 
method is foredoomed to failure. A few of the better 
teachers, specially endowed with adaptability and initia- 



92 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

tive, may grasp the essential advantages of the new 
method, gradually evolve a suitable technique to fit it, and 
adopt it as their own. But most teachers, finding them- 
selves accomplishing less with the new method than they 
did with the old, and longing for the famihar routine, will, 
unless constant supervision prevents, return surrepti- 
tiously at least to their former procedure, convinced that 
there is none better and that attempting new methods is a 
waste of time and trying to the nerves. 

Of course, if the real interest of the teachers can be 
aroused in the new method by a judicious advertising cam- 
paign before it is introduced, and if everybody's patience 
holds out long enough, and a definite poHcy of teacher 
selecting and teacher training is carried on, eventually 
the new method will come into its own if it really pos- 
sesses marked advantages. But in too many instances 
the innovation is discarded as worthless after a few 
months of half-hearted trial without any adequate attempt 
to modify the environment to fit the new method. And 
the chief factors contributing to such failures in attempt- 
ing to introduce into a school system new methods of 
teaching are the indifference of teachers or their actual 
antagonism toward new methods in general, their lack of 
knowledge concerning particular new methods, and their 
lack of foresight and initiative in adapting themselves 
and their ideas to changing conditions. Probably the 
most annoying factor and the one most difficult to elimi- 
nate is the teacher's mental attitude toward new ways 
of doing things, her clinging to familiar trails, and her 
aversion to breaking new paths even in the interest of 
finding a smoother, shorter, and pleasanter road to her 
goal. 

Hence new methods, unless real interest and behef in 
them has been aroused in the teacher beforehand, have to 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 93 

contend against ignorance and indifference or prejudice 
from the start. I repeat, therefore, that the efficiency of 
new methods cannot be accurately compared with that 
of old methods if the new ones are tested by the very 
teacher whose own methods are being questioned as to 
their comparative worth. Her attitude is too much like 
that of the hen defending her chickens from the hawk that 
would destroy them, the teacher's chickens being her own 
familiar methods while the hawk is the superintendent 
with his disturbing new ideas. 

We can, however, determine pretty accurately which of 
two methods a teacher can (or will) handle most efficiently 
regardless of the actual possibilities inherent in the two 
methods. And since it is essential that each teacher use, 
in general, the methods with which she can produce the 
best results, it is also essential that we know what those 
methods are. It will not be found profitable, merely for 
the sake of having certain new methods, to enforce their 
continued use on teachers who cannot or will not produce 
as good results with them as they produce with their own 
methods. So we must have some way of determining 
whether or not teachers are doing as well or better with 
the new methods after using them a reasonable length of 
time, say six months or a year. 

A Suggested Plan of Procedure 

This can be done with the help of standardized tests. 
First select ten or a dozen pupils in the school with mental 
ages and intelligence quotients as nearly equal as it is 
possible to arrange. Divide them into two equal groups 
that average about the same in mental ability. Next 
test them with some standardized tests in the subject for 
which special methods are to be compared. Then have 
the teacher try out two methods, one on each group of 



94 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

pupils, over a period of three or four months. At the end 
of that time give the tests again and compare the progress 
of the two groups. 

Such a trial will not prove necessarily which method is 
the best as regards possibilities, nor with which method the 
teacher could do the best if she had the proper inclination 
and training, but it will prove which method she will do 
the best with under existing conditions. And that is the 
essential point. If, after preparing carefully for the 
introduction of a new method of teaching some subject, 
by discussing its possibilities with teachers individually 
and collectively, and by furnishing them with suitable 
reading material concerning its basic principles, special 
advantages, and technique; if after demonstrating to the 
teachers the proper handhng of the method and giving 
them a reasonable length of time to acquire skill in its 
use; and if after striving in every way to arouse their 
interest and hearty cooperation in giving the new method a 
thorough try-out; if, after doing all these things and as 
many more as you can thinlc of, you make such a com- 
parison as outlined above and find that a teacher either 
cannot or will not do at least as good work with the new 
method as she did with the old, then it is time to discard 
either the teacher or the method. If your best teachers 
have succeeded in getting superior results by using the 
new method, it means that the method is all right and it 
may be wise to keep the method and get a new teacher. 
But if your best teachers have failed to get better results 
with the new method after several months of earnest ef- 
fort, it will be better to discard the method. 

Need oe Testing Methods by Results 

At any rate, in order that the children may get the most 
for their time and the taxpayers the most for their money, 



EFFICIENCY OF TEACHING METHODS 95 

it behooves us to make sure that the methods in use in the 
schools under our direction are the most efficient that can 
be used under existing circumstances. We can do this 
either by selecting and training teachers to fit our chosen 
methods or by selecting methods to fit the available 
teachers. Most emphatically it is not efficiency to cling 
to new methods forced upon untrained or improperly 
trained and often unwilling teachers just because they are 
up-to-date methods, when those teachers are not doing 
as good work v/ith them as with their ov/n methods. 
Unless we can train our teachers successfully in the proper 
use of the new methods, or obtain teachers already trained 
in their use, we had better stick to the old a little longer. 
Standardized tests will help to prove whether or not the 
new methods are more successful than the old methods 
in a particular environment. Results are more important 
than methods. 



CHAPTER IX 
SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 

Practical Notes for Practical Purposes 

Another promising offspring of modern psychological 
science is the standardized intelligence test. In the hands 
of practical men intelligence tests are proving themselves 
to be practical tools for practical purposes. During the 
war they were used to obtain leaders of men for the army; 
large industrial concerns are using them to pick young men 
and women to be trained for executive positions; great 
universities are using them in lieu of entrance examina- 
tions to select students; social welfare organizations are 
using them to discover feeble-minded individuals who 
menace society as potential or actual criminals ; live teach- 
ers and educational administrators are using them for 
various purposes. We have heard much of them during 
the last three or four years. Are we all getting our share 
of the help they offer us? 

I do not propose to enter into a comprehensive discus- 
sion of the nature of inteUigence tests, the need for them, 
their reliability, or the uses to which they might be put. 
All this has been set forth at length and in a clear and 
readable manner by Lewis M. Terman to whose book, 
The Measurement of Intelligence, published by Houghton 
Mifflin Company, I refer all readers desirous of a full dis- 
cussion of intelligence testing in general and of the Binet- 
Simon Intelligence Scale in particular. My own purpose 
is merely to describe how we have put intelligence tests 
to practical uses in our schools. 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 97 

Intelligence Tests Needed in School: Faulty 
Judgments of Teachers 

I SHALL, however, refer for a moment to the need for some 
method of measuring objectively the relative mental 
abilities of pupils in the schools. This need is not gener- 
ally felt even among teachers and school men. Some of 
the teachers whom I convinced with comparatively little 
difficulty of the need for standardized tests for measuring 
the progress of pupils in their studies were inchned to 
scoff at the idea of intelligence tests. Their attitude may 
be expressed in the words of one teacher of many years' 
experience who said with a decided air of assurance, 
" I guess I can tell the bright children from the dull ones 
without the help of any intelligence tests." Just before 
giving the intelligence tests in the school of this particular 
teacher, I asked her to write down for me the name of the 
brightest pupil in each grade according to her best judg- 
ment. 

As might be expected, and as events proved, her esti- 
mates were right or nearly right in some cases and entirely 
wrong in others. As an example of being wrong, she 
selected as the brightest pupil in grade four, a twelve-year- 
old girl of small stature who led her class in achievement. 
Now it must be perfectly obvious to any one who con- 
siders the matter seriously that it would be a very unusual 
thing to find a mentally superior child of twelve years in 
the fourth grade. The teacher, however, had neglected 
the age factor in making her estimate of this child's mental 
ability and had rated her as a very bright child simply 
because she was doing the best work of any pupil in her 
class. The fact that the child was small for her age and 
so did not tower above her classmates of nine and ten 
probably helped out the delusion. If this girl had been 



98 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

placed in a class of normal twelve-year-olds, she would 
have been recognized at once as a dull pupil — a fact 
which the mental tests at once disclosed. She had a 
mental age of ten years two months and an intelligence 
quotient of 80. 

In reality the brightest child in the fourth grade proved 
to be a little girl of eight years six months whom the 
teacher estimated as ^^ just average." This girl had a 
mental age of ten years and an intelligence quotient of 118. 
Among pupils of her own age she would have been a shin- 
ing star. The teacher's errors of judgment were due to 
the fact that because of their ages the first girl was work- 
ing a little below capacity and the second a little above 
capacity. Teachers and others are too prone to estimate a 
child's mental ability by comparing the amount and qual- 
ity of his work with those of the other children in his grade 
regardless of how much he may be advanced or retarded. 
If the child happens to be in the normal grade for his 
age, this judgment may be fairly accurate; otherwise it 
is prone to be inaccurate. Personal judgment in such 
matters must be replaced as far as possible by objective 
measurement. 

The Fallacy that All Pupils can make Satisfactory 

Progress 

Furthermore, intelligence tests are needed to help refute 
a common fallacy which is almost unbelievably widespread 
in the educational world as well as outside it — the fallacy 
that under proper conditions and with proper instruction 
every child, barring the obviously feeble-minded, is about 
equally capable of making satisfactory progress in any 
study. This idea is echoed in our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which offers as a self-evident truth that " All 
men are created equal." It is reechoed in the rabid mouth- 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 99 

ings of I.W.W/s proclaiming the equality of men. It is 
the precept and guide of the teacher who wastes her time 
and the time of the brighter children of a class while 
she holds them back and tries desperately to help one 
or two mentally deficient classmates to keep up with the 
rest. 

Only a short time ago the principal of one of the oldest 
and most famous academies in New England spent nearly 
an hour assuring me most vehemently that there was 
absolutely no reason in the world why, with proper instruc- 
tion and sujSicient interested effort, one student could not 
do just as well as another in Latin, history, algebra, or 
chemistry — and this in face of the fact that he admitted 
he had never been able to achieve such ideally uniform 
results in any of his classes. I gathered from his talk, 
however, that the failure was not due in any measure to 
inadequate instruction, but entirely to widely varying 
degrees of interest, industry, and application on the part 
of his pupils. He was cock-sure and eloquent. I was so 
amazed at his attitude and so overwhelmed by a torrent 
of time-worn, dogmatic, and, to him, unassailable argu- 
ments upholding his contention, that I could offer but a 
feeble reply. I am convinced that he went away with 
the firm belief that I was some new variety of incurable 
crank. 

' Now any one with common sense who will forget 
proverbs and doubtful platitudes long enough to give his 
common sense time to function, can readily see that men 
are not born equal. Perhaps they should be, but they are 
not. They are not born equal mentally, physically, or 
financially, nor even with that democratic equality of 
opportunity of which we hear so much. We have all ex- 
tremes mentally from the driveling idiot to the genius, 
physically from the bedridden cripple to the physically 



100 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

perfect human being, and financially from the pauper to 
the millionaire. Financial inequality may be more or less 
overcome, and in many cases so also may physical in- 
equality. But mental inequality, according to the psy- 
chologists, seems to be pretty much a fixed condition. 
They, with their brother scientists in the realm of ge- 
netics, seem to have proved to the satisfaction of the 
majority of their fellows that an individual's mental 
capacities are determined from the moment of his con- 
ception, and that the limitations of his mental develop- 
ment are predetermined by the forces of heredity. This 
means for us, among other things, that as soon as a school 
child has reached his Hmitations, if not before, he will 
begin to fall behind his classmates who have inherited 
better mental equipment, and that no amount of extra 
coaching on our part or effort on his part will enable 
him to keep up for long unless the rest of the class is 
held down to his pace. If, therefore, efficiency means 
partly the ehmination of wasted effort, should we not, in 
the name of efficiency, eliminate the waste of time and 
energy expended in the hopeless task of trying to fit all 
children to the same mould? 

The Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale 

Only for the past few years, in fact, only since the publica- 
tion of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (in some of its 
later and better editions), have we really a practical and 
fairly accurate tool for the measurement of inteUigence, 
one which can be used effectively by interested persons of 
ordinary intelligence with little experience in psychological 
testing. This scale, because of the many years of careful 
investigation and experiment by its originator, the several 
painstaking revisions, and its careful standardization 
both as to content and method of procedure, is undcubt- 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS loi 

edly the most accurate intelligence test available. The 
fact, however, that each individual must be interviewed 
separately makes it unsuitable for general use in testing 
large numbers of pupils, as, for example, in making an 
educational survey. For a few examiners to test thou- 
sands of children in a large school system, or for one 
examiner to test several hundred children in a small school 
system, with the Binet-Simon Scale would take more time 
than is usually available for such purposes. This is espe- 
cially true if the testing must be done by the superin- 
tendent or his assistants along with their numerous other- 
duties. 

Group Tests of Intelligence 

When we entered the war against Germany our military 
authorities were faced with the problem of selecting and 
training thousands of new officers to lead the millions of 
raw recruits furnished by the draft. Time was at a 
premium. The psychologists offered their assistance, and 
after a period of trial it was decided to permit them to 
select the new officer material by giving intelligence tests 
to the more promising of the drafted and enHsted men. 
The above-mentioned limitation to the practical use of the 
Binet-Simon Test was quickly realized and led to the rapid 
devising and standardizing of group intelligence tests by 
means of which hundreds of individuals could be tested at 
one time. These tests were to some extent based on the 
Binet-Simon Test and to a greater extent on the special 
mental tests which had hitherto been used in psychological 
laboratories (directions, analogies, opposites, etc.). The 
new instruments, however, were adapted in organization 
and method of procedure to group presentation, definite 
response, and objective scoring. By the end of the war 
such tests had reached a high degree of development. 



102 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

The industrial and social world, awakening to the possi- 
bilities of mental measurement, soon adopted the army 
tests for their own purposes, as they could well do, since 
they were dealing mainly with adults. But radical 
changes were required to fit them for use in testing the 
mental abilities of elementary-school children. Devising 
suitable group tests for the younger children who cannot 
read or write much was the most difficult problem. This 
problem has been partially solved within the last three 
years by means of picture completion tests. There are 
now available a number of excellent group tests adapted 
to school use. In this district we have used the Otis 
Group Intelligence Test for the upper grades, the Dear- 
bom test for the lower grades, and the Haggerty tests for 
all the grades. 

Our Original Purpose to Locate the Mentally 

Defective 

Although we have derived several worth-while advan- 
tages from the use of standardized intelligence tests in the 
schools, the original purpose in giving them was to dis- 
cover all the mentally incompetent children in the schools 
of the district. The scheme for measuring the ability of 
teachers by the progress of their pupils, as described in a 
previous chapter (such progress to be measured by stand- 
ardized achievement tests), demanded some way of know- 
ing which pupils were mentally capable of making some- 
where near normal progress and which ones were incapable 
of doing so. It is manifestly unfair to expect teachers to 
secure normal progress with feeble-minded or very dull 
pupils. Accordingly, the work of determining the mental 
ages and intelligence quotients of all the children in the 
district was undertaken soon after they had been graded 
in October. 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 103 

The Otis Test 

At that time, as far as I knew at least, the most suitable 
standardized group intelligence test on the market was 
the Otis test.^ It contains excellent testing material 
organized and arranged so as to be easily and objectively 
scored. It is supposed to be used as low as the third 
grade, but on checking up the results with those from the 
Binet-Simon scale I found that, although the correlation 
was fairly high in the seventh and eighth grades, it grew 
rapidly less in going down the grades until in the third 
grade it was too small to bespeak much accuracy for the 
Otis test. This is assuming, of course, that the Binet- 
Simon scale is the standard in accuracy. Just as a guess, 
I might venture the opinion that the Otis test makes 
too great demands on concentration and acquired reading 
abihty to give accurate results below the sixth grade ex- 
cept with the brightest children. 

This failure of the Otis test to give accurate results in 
the lower grades was som^ewhat discouraging. I had 
planned to use it with all pupils above the second grade 
and then gradually, as I could find time, to test out the 
first two grades with the Binet-Simon scale. It now ap- 
peared that I should have to begin with the individual 
tests in the fifth grade and work down. In the interests 
of uniformity and accuracy I planned to do all the mental 
testing myself, and even with group tests this would be a 
considerable task in a district where the schools were so 
scattered. 

The Haggerty Tests 

Nevertheless, I tackled the job and by the end of the 
fall term had tested more than seventy pupils with the 

* This was the first of the tests which Dr. Otis brought out. 



104 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Binet-Simon scale. During the first month of the winter 
term other matters kept me busy. Then came the giving 
of the midyear achievement tests and the attendant work 
of tabulating results. I had just got around to taking up 
the mental testing once more, when the Haggerty tests 
made their appearance. I ordered some to try out. 
They were first given in the four lower grades to the same 
children to whom the individual tests had already been 
given. I was delighted to find a fairly close agreement 
between the Haggerty and Binet-Simon results even in 
the first and second grades. Then I began all over again, 
giving the Haggerty tests right through the district in all 
the grades. The giving of the tests took about a week and 
by the end of three weeks they were all corrected and the 
results recorded. Each pupil's mental age and intelli- 
gence quotient were recorded on his or her graph card 
where they have often proved very enlightening when 
studied in connection with the pupil's achievement record 
on the same card. 

A Case in which Intelligence Testing Helped 

For instance, I have before me as I write the card of a 
thirteen-year-old boy with an intelligence quotient of io8. 
Although his mental age at the tim^e of the test was 
thirteen years eleven months, he was only in the sixth 
grade, and his achievement record showed that even in 
that grade he was doing poor work. Now, why should a 
child of his age and intelligence be doing poor work in the 
sixth grade? Any one or more of various conditions m.ight 
account for it, such as poor teaching, poor general health, 
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, defective sense organs, un- 
favorable living conditions at home, constant fatigue from 
outside work, and so on. But if we are to handle such 
cases with understanding and sympathy, we must know 
definitely the cause of the trouble. 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 105 

In this boy's case a combination of untoward circum- 
stances was found. To begin with, he was much over- 
worked outside of school hours, often at tasks beyond his 
strength. Moreover, his parents were constantly quarrel- 
ing and snarling at each other, making home life a misery 
to the sensitive boy. A medical examination showed him 
to be in good general health, but revealed the fact that he 
was a little deaf — a fact never before suspected even by 
his parents. In connection with this fact it is significant 
that his teacher was accustomed to speak in rather sub- 
dued tones, so that he lost a large part of the oral instruc- 
tion. To sum up, the boy was hard of hearing, sensitive, 
tired, and discouraged. 

Having discovered these conditions, we moved to 
remedy them as far as possible. Seating the boy where he 
could watch the teacher's lips at all times when she was 
talking to the class enabled him to get much instruction 
which under former conditions would have been lost to 
him. A tactful show of sympathy and understanding on 
the teacher's part, and words of encouragement instead of 
constant nagging for failure to do the class work, brought 
a new light to his eyes and the sullen look of a misunder- 
stood boy left his face. His whole attitude toward the 
school and its work changed. A talk with his father, who 
did not mean to be either unreasonable or unkind, helped 
to lighten his burden of work at home. A talk with both 
parents concerning the effects of their constant bickering 
on their boy's life served to make home life more pleasant. 
They were really a devoted couple, and their quarreling 
seemed to be more from habit and because they enjoyed 
it than because of real ill-feeling. This pupil is undoubt- 
edly a much happier boy, interested in his school work 
and gradually catching up with the other children of his 
age and ability in the school. He is no longer considered 
dull. 



io6 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Such investigations and readjustments are decidedly 
worth while. But before they can take place our atten- 
tion must be attracted to the need for investigation. And 
here the worth of standardized tests, intelligently used, is 
again demonstrated. In this boy's case it is interesting 
to conjecture whether the need for investigation would 
ever have become apparent, if the results of his mental and 
achievement tests had not been recorded on the same card 
and carefully studied together by some one interested in 
interpreting them for the best good of all concerned. 

This was a particularly interesting case, and for this 
reason it was chosen to illustrate my point. But it is not 
the only case where comparison of mental-test records 
with achievement- test records has led to investigations 
resulting in permanent good. And there is need of investi- 
gation whenever a child grades high in mental ability and 
low in actual achievement of school work. For it is very 
unusual to find a pupil, physically and mentally normal, 
in good health, and with good home influences, who is 
doing unsatisfactory work in school. If such is appar- 
ently the case, there is generally something wrong some- 
where; and it is usually possible to make a beneficial 
readjustment. 

Another Case — A Menace 

Another card represents a type of pupil constituting one 
of the serious school and social problems. It is the record 
of a boy of fifteen years six months. His mental age is 
nine years two months, and his intelligence quotient 59. 
This boy's graph shows that he cannot do satisfactory" 
work in the third grade, although he has been in that grade 
for four years. Investigation revealed his immediate 
ancestry to be of universally low mental and moral 
caliber. This boy is a menace to the school and the school 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 107 

is a menace to him. He is a menace to the school because, 
with all the dawning strength, instincts, passions, and 
emotions of the primitive male controlled only by the 
undeveloped mind of a nine-year-old, he is no fit associate 
for normal boys and girls. The school is a menace to him 
Because, instead of furnishing him with interesting and 
valuable employment suited to his abilities, it is wasting 
time that he could more profitably and instructively 
employ elsewhere and because it is forcing upon him habits 
gf idleness and failure. 

XjJnless special classes are available, the public school is 
no place for children with intelligence quotients much 
below 70, ^especially when they have become two or more 
years retarded in their school work. No further evidence 
is needed that they have reached the limit of their mental 
development along the lines of the ordinary program of 
studies. Whenever possible they should be transferred to 
special institutions where they can have special training 
suited to their needs and capacities; and rtieasures should 
be taken to prevent them from reproducing their kind. 
At any rate, the public schools should be rid of them. 
X^^ith the proofs furnished by the results of intelligence 
tests, backed by the child's record of achievement in his 
school work, it ought to be possible to get school boards 
to act in excusing such children from school even if they 
cannot be otherwise properly taken care of. / \^ 

B order-Line Cases 

Still more of a problem, from all points of view, are the 
children with intelligence quotients ranging from 65 to 80. 
More often than otherwise they appear superficially to be 
entirely normal or even bright. They may do excellent 
work in the first four grades where habit formation is the 
chief end to be attained and where drill is the chief feature 



io8 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

of instruction. Sometimes they continue to do fairly well 
even in the upper grades in schools where much rote 
memorizing prevails and where memorizing ability is 
mistakenly considered an index of general intelligence and 
learning power. But in properly conducted schools such 
children begin to fall behind their classmates in the fifth 
and sixth grades and soon become hopelessly retarded. 
They have reached the limits of their abilities in learning 
from books or from ordinary schoolroom instruction. 
They are very much lacking in the powers of initiation, 
discrimination, and reasoning demanded by the higher 
types of learning. They are incapable of higher thought 
processes. Hence they fail in grammar, problem-solving 
in mathematics, and in the content subjects if the teaching 
of the latter demands, as it should, more than mere 
memorization of facts. 

7^ Teachers are often unjustly blamed because such chil- 
dren fail in their work. Parents wonder why their children 
cannot learn under the new teacher as well as they did 
under the old when it is in no way the fault of the teacher. 
The children Jiave simply reached their limit of mental 
development;-. Jf a child reaches the limit of his mental 
development at a mental age of eleven years, he will never 
be much older than eleven years mentally, though he lives 
to be a hundred. Children of this sort are too often per- 
mitted to become the pacemakers in their classes to the 
untold harm of the brighter pupils. But in spite of all 
attempts to keep them along with the other and brighter 
children of the same age, they finally get completely be- 
yond their depth and fail day after day in their school 
tasks until they begin to believe they are absolute failures 
and that success in anything is impossible for them. They 
grow discouraged, give up trying, and devote themselves 
to mischief or wait passively for the legal age limit to be 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 109 

reached so that they can leave school and earn something 
in return for their time. ^Meanwhile, failure and idleness 
have all too often become habits that follow them beyond 
the schoolroom and lessen their social efficiency. In such 
cases the school has defeated its own ends. 
^ This type of child, the high-grade moron, is such a 
problem partly because he is not generally recognized as 
being mentally deficient. The shortcomings of the feeble- 
minded are generally evident, and no one expects much 
from them. ^^ The high-grade moron, however, is usually 
normal in appearance and in ordinary intercourse with 
other people appears to be normal mentally. It is only 
when situations arise which demand the functioning of the 
higher forms of intelligence that he reveals his deficiencies. 
Even his teacher often fails to understand why he con- 
tinually fails in his school work. He is characterized as 
" obstinate " and " lazy " when in reality he is mentally 
deficient and incapable of doing the work demanded of 
him. XCarefully conducted mental tests will reveal such 
cases and should lead to more sympathetic and intelligent 
treatment of them. 

X When such children become retarded as much as two 
years, it is little less than criminal to keep them in rural 
or small-town schools where there are no special classes 
for their benefit and where there is not sufficient differen- 
tiation of courses to permit of their being given amounts 
and kinds of work suited to their abilities. _ If possible 
they should be sent to manual trades schools where they 
can be taught a trade and at the same time be given as 
much cultural training as they are capable of acquiring. 
Otherwise some arrangements should be m.ade whereby 
they can leave school and go to work under the super- 
vision of their parents or of other responsible persons who 
will instruct them in the rudiments of some useful line of 



no STANDARDIZED TESTS 

work. They might still be under the supervision of the 
school authorities to the extent of being obliged to spend 
as many hours per week in useful labor under real instruc- 
tion as normal children spend in school; such supervision 
of the school authorities to continue until the legal age 
limit for compulsory attendance is reached. And why 
could not school credits be allowed for such work? 

Intelligence Tests Used in Rating Teachers 

To return, however, to my main purpose in giving the 
intelligence tests. When I first discussed with the teach- 
ers of the district the feasibility of some scheme of rating 
teachers based principally on the progress made by their 
pupils, it was objected that the varying mental abilities 
of the children would make such rating unfair unless the 
records of the slower pupils were ignored. But who was 
to be the judge as to which pupils were incapable of mak- 
ing normal progress? It was this situation which led us 
to make use of the intelligence tests. We agreed to dis- 
card in calculating the teachers' ratings the records of all 
pupils with intelligence quotients below 80. Later a still 
better scheme was worked out based on the average in- 
telligence quotients of the different schools in such a way 
as to take full cognizance of the varying mental abilities 
of pupils,^ Thus, a teacher with a school composed in 
general of dull children would not suffer in comparison 
with a teacher of equal ability with a school largely con- 
sisting of bright children. That is, two teachers of about 
equal ability would get approximately equal ratings re- 
gardless of the comparative average mentalities of their 
respective schools. In this scheme the intelligence test 
was the impartial judge whose findings were accepted as 
satisfactory by both teachers and superintendent. 

1 See chapter vii. 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS in 

Identifying the Bright Pupils 

^Another valuable service of the intelligence tests was in 
locating the children of very superior abilities. In one 
school of twenty-five pupils I discovered five with intelli- 
gence quotients around 140 and none with intelligence 
quotients of less than 80. This school was locally noted 
as being uniformly fortunate in securing good teachers 
under whom the pupils advanced very well indeed. Of 
course it would be a mighty poor teacher who could n't 
get passable results with such a school. In another school 
I found, working with other children of about the same 
chronological age, a little girl of eight years six months 
with a mental age of twelve years and an intelligence 
quotient of 142. In the ordinary run of events she would 
probably have secured no further recognition of her 
superior abilities than regular promotion and graduation 
in due time. She is now nine years five months old and 
leading her class in the fifth grade. She could probably 
do satisfactory work in the sixth grade. 

This type of pupil is not generally recognized as a seri- 
ous problem. And, in truth, the situation is more serious 
for the pupil and the public than for the teacher, however 
unconscious of the fact the pupil and the pubhc may be. 
As at present organized, the average school is probably 
doing such children as much harm as it is good, in that it 
does not furnish them with opportunity and incentive to 
develop their capacities to the limit. It is from among 
these children that the leaders of the future are to come, 
and the public which foots the bills is being cheated when 
such children are not given opportunity to develop as they 
should. The present generation is retarded in progress 
by the provincial narrowness of natively intelligent but 
mentally blind leaders of the blind whose possibilities for 



112 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

development were early cramped to deformity in the nar- 
row confines of the traditional elementary and secondary 
school programs by being forced to travel in a groovejjx 
competition with their mentally inferior classmates. \Our 
school system can never attain nearly to its maximum 
efficiency until programs and courses of study are so 
differentiated as to fit the kind and quantity. of work to 
the mental capacities of individual pupllsj /The stand- 
ardized intelligence test will prove a usefuTtool in shaping 
plans toward that end>^ y /W 

Special Opportunities in City Systems 

The problems noted above are present to a greater or less 
extent in practically all school systems; but it is in the 
cities that, with the help of standardized tests, they may 
be most easily solved. The city superintendent has, or 
can arrange to have, special classes or even special schools 
to take care of the feeble-minded children so as to separate 
them from the other pupils. Those troubled with sensory 
defects or other serious physical deficiencies can be placed 
in special classes or institutions provided for their benefit. 
Then with two, or preferably three, divisions in each grade, 
the children can be assigned on the basis of mental ages 
and intelligence quotients to groups from which fairly 
uniform work can be expected. 

Let us suppose, for instance, that intelligence tests have 
been given to the fifth grade in a large city school and that 
the mental ages and intelligence quotients of all the pupils 
have been recorded on cards together with their respective 
names. First, the average mental age for the whole grade 
should be computed and all cards sorted out which are 
marked with mental ages more than a year above or below 
the average for the grade. The pupils represented by 
these cards should be given special attention. Their 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 113 

achievement records should be studied and, where possible, 
they should be retested with the Binet-Simon scale if that 
scale was not used in the first instance. It will probably 
be found that most of these pupils do not belong in the 
fifth grade at all, but in the fourth or sixth grade. Next, 
the remaining cards may be sorted into four piles. Let 
the first contain the intelligence quotients below 70; the 
second, those from 70 to 90; the third, those from 90 to 
115; and the fourth, those above 115. These groupings 
are of course rather arbitrary and might be varied some- 
what. All pupils with intelligence quotients much below 
70 would probably be best placed in special classes or 
schools. The other three groups might be termed the A, 
B, and C divisions of grade five; and the children in each 
group, being of approximately equal mental age and in- 
telHgence, should be able to do about the same kind and 
amount of school work. Since there are no sharp lines of 
demarcation between groups, some further adjustments 
should probably be made as experience might dictate. 
1/ The courses of study could then be adapted to the vari- 
ous groups. The group of dull pupils might be assigned a 
minimum of book work and a maximum of manual train- 
ing. The pupils in the normal group would perhaps divide 
their time somewhat evenly between these two lines of 
work. The superior group could probably accomplish as 
much of the manual work as the normal group and much 
more of the mental work. 

In this way intelligence tests may assist in bringing 
about that much-needed differentiation in courses of study 
which will permit each pupil to have work more suited to 
his particular abilities. Although it is advisable, where 
possible, to have a double grouping based on the results of 
intelligence tests — namely, one grouping according to 
mental ages for classification by grades and the other 



TI4 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

grouping based on intelligence quotients for subdivisions 
of grades — such a double grouping is not usually possible 
in the smaller schools where all the pupils in a grade must 
work together. In these cases the grouping must depend 
more on the mental ages, as will be explained farther on. 

Intelligence Tests for Grading Purposes 

It was while engaged in recording the mental ages and 
intelligence quotients of the pupils on their respective 
graph cards that the possible use of intelligence tests for 
grading purposes occurred to me. I gradually became 
conscious of the fact that, although there was wide varia- 
tion in the chronological ages of the children in any one 
grade (as they had already been graded by the standardized 
achievement tests), the mental ages in a grade did not 
usually appear to vary by more than a few months or a 
year from the average mental age for the grade. Now if, 
as may apparently be expected, there is close correlation 
between the results of intelligence tests and the combined 
results of achievement tests, that is, between mental 
ability and accomplishment of school tasks, why cannot 
intelligence tests be used instead of achievement tests for 
grading purposes, at a considerable saving of time and 
energy? 

When, therefore, I had finished recording the results of 
the intelligence tests on the graph card, I proceeded to 
develop this idea. The chronological and mental ages of 
all the sixth-grade pupils in the Tamworth schools were 
tabulated as shown in Table XIII. 

The Small Range of Mental Ages in Each Grade 

The variation in chronological ages within this sixth grade 
is from nine years five months for the youngest pupil to 
fifteen years three months for the oldest — a total range 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 115 

TABLE XIII. COMPARISON OF MENTAL AND CHRONO- 
LOGICAL AGES OF SIXTH-GRADE PUPILS 
TAMWORTH SCHOOLS 

Number of pupils 
Age Chronological Mental 

9-0 to 9-5 I 

9-6 to 9-1 1 I 

10-0 to 10-5 o 

10-6 to 1 i-i 1 3 

II-O to 11-5 2 I 

11-6 to ii-ii 6 7 

12-0 to 12-5 10 14 

12-6 to 12-11 5 II 

13-0 to 13-5 1 6 

13-6 to 13-11 3 

14-0 to 14-5 2 

14-6 to I4-II 2 

15-0 to 15-5 3 

Total 39 39 

of five years ten months, or of nearly six years. On the 
other hand, the variation in mental ages of the same 
children is from eleven years five months to thirteen years 
five months — a total range of only two years. Indeed, if 
the first two pupils and the last pupil are omitted, the 
range is only one and a half years. These facts would 
indicate that the grading with the achievement tests had 
served to bring together children of much the same men- 
tahty and that intelligence tests would possibly have 
served equally well if not better for grading purposes. 
Similar tabulations were made for the se,cond- and third- 
grade pupils. The results were not quite so convincing, 
but were nevertheless significant. The range in mental 
ages for the third grade was one year nine months and for 
the second grade two years three months. There was 
twenty-two per cent of overlapping of mental ages be- 
tween these two grades. The increasing range of mental 
ages within a grade as we go down the grades would seem 



1 16 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

to support the reasonable and suspected fact that for 
accuracy of results these tests are less dependable the 
younger the children tested. The overlapping encountered 
in the two lower grades led me to make still another tabu- 
lation — namicly, of the seventh grade — so that I could 
compare it with the sixth grade on the basis of the over- 
lapping of mental ages. There was an overlap of about 
fourteen per cent between these two grades. This would in- 
dicate that the amount of overlapping also increases from 
higher to lower grades and probably for the same reason 
mentioned above for the increase in range of mental ages. 

Mental Ages of Pupils in Each Grade 

Then I began to wonder how much differently the pupils 
would have been grouped by grades if the grading had been 
done with intelligence tests instead of achievement tests. 
So I constructed a distribution as shown in Table XIV. 
Having no established data as to what the hmits of the 
range should be for the different grades, considerable ex- 
perimenting was necessary with different arrangements of 
intervals. A two-year range was finally adopted, since I 
had already found, as described above, that the range of 
mental ages for each grade was about two years. Since 
children ordinarily enter school between ages six and eight, 
and since the chronological age of a normal child corre- 
sponds with his mental age, the first grade was assigned 
the range of mental ages from 6-0 to 7-1 1. (The ex- 
pression " 7-1 1 " means 7 years 11 months and so for like 
expressions.) The interval used in Table XIV is one year, 
but two intervals are allowed for each grade in order to 
show a more exact distribution. This arrangement also 
allows for an overlapping between grades of one year of 
mental age. Thus, the normal range for the first-grade 
pupils is from 6-0 to 7-1 1, that for the second grade from 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 117 

7-0 to 8-1 1, that for the third grade from 8-0 to 9-1 1, and 
so on. Moreover, the children in any annual age group 
may be normally in either of two grades. For instance 
the nine-year-olds are normally placed in either the third 
or fourth grade. The first grade might be regarded as 
having a range of three years because all children with 
mental ages below 6-0 will naturally be included in that 
grade. A somewhat similar statement may be made for 
the eighth grade, since it might be expected to include any 
children with mental ages above 13-0. This bunching of 
mental ages is, of course, due to the fact that these grades 
are the lowest and highest respectively in the school. 



' TABLE XIV. MENTAL AGES OF PUPILS IN EACH GRADE 


Mental ages 


Grades 


Total 


1 


II 


III 


IV 


V 


VI 


VII 


VIII 


Sto s-n-..- 


8 


4 


4 


1 

5 


4 
27 

36 
4 
2 


1 

6 


X 

5 

18 

28 


3 


3 


6 to 6-ir..^.. 


39 

45 


43 


7 to 7-IX..,.- 


43 
46 


93 


8 to 8-1 1 ^ 


2 


28 
41 


81 


9 to 9-11..... 


S 


26 
19 


77 


10 to lO-II 


3 

2 


S6 


11 to II-Il 

12 to 12-11..... 


4 

I 


23 
47 


70 
73 


i3toi3-ii..... 


3 
6 


3 
34 


36 


14 and over 


IS 


55 


Total 


94 


98 


78 


56 


73 


86 


67 


40 


592 



ii8 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Grading by Mental and Achievement Tests Sub- 
stantially THE Same 

Table XIV shows the distribution of pupils as they are 
actually graded in this district on the basis of achievement 
in standardized tests. Five hundred and ninety-two 
children are represented. All figures between the heavy 
zigzag lines represent children normally placed according 
to their mental ages. The figures outside these lines repre- 
sent pupils working, for some reason, in higher or lower 
grades than the tests show them to be fitted for. Take the 
third-grade column, for instance. In this grade there are 
28 children between 8-0 and 8-1 1 and 41 between 9-0 and 
9-1 1 that rightly belong there. There are four children 
in the grade that, according to their mental ages, ought to 
be in the first or second grade, and on the same basis still 
other children belong in the fourth and fifth grades. 

Now, if all the schools were graded strictly on the basis 
of the mental ages of pupils, all the figures would fall be- 
tween the zigzag lines. Hence 89 out of 592, or 15 per 
cent, of the pupils are working above or below their indi- 
cated mental capacities. Of these, 7.1 per cent are work- 
ing above or trying to, and 7.9 per cent are working below. 
This shows on the whole a pretty close agreement between 
the results of intelligence and achievement tests and indi- 
cates that either gives substantially the same basis for 
grading. 

I have studied the records of the children whose mental 
ages show them to be misplaced and find that most of those 
working above normal grade are pupils who had been 
pushed too far ahead by their teachers before the prelimi- 
nary grading took place and whom, since they were work- 
ing hard to hold their places, we did not demote when 
regrading. About half of the pupils shown as working 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 119 

below their apparent mental capacities are accounted for 
by retardation due to sickness or absence, poor general 
health, sensory defects, etc. Most of the others remain a 
mystery as yet. Gradually we hope to work most of the 
misplaced ones into their proper mental-age groups so that 
the grouping of pupils throughout the district will be based 
pretty closely on mental age. 

City schools can be graded with intelligence tests into 
eight mental-age groups as shown in Table XIV and then, 
since there will be a wide variation of intelligence quotients 
within each mental-age group, these groups can be sub- 
divided into grade divisions or sections as explained above. 
But the smaller rural schools without grade subdivisions 
must necessarily be satisfied with a less perfect distribution. 

A Proposed Plan of Grading in a Rural School 

Let us suppose that we have given the intelligence tests 
in a rural school and that the mental ages and intelligence 
quotients of the pupils are found to be as shown in Table 
XV. Now, let us select from this table all the pupils with 
mental ages within the first-grade range (all below 8-0); 
and let us list them separately in Table XVI with their 
respective intelligence quotients. 

In discussing Table XIV it was noted that part of the 
children in the 7-0 to 7-1 1 age group would normally be 
in the second grade. How shall we decide which ones to 
place in the second grade? To begin with, no child just 
beginning school will belong there. Accordingly, in Table 
XVI let us mark v/ith a star the number of each pupil who 
attended school the previous year. These pupils may enter 
the second grade if their mentality is normal or better. 
Let us therefore mark with an additional star those with 
intelligence quotients of 90 or above. Those thus marked 
with a double star may be assigned to the second grade. 



120 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



TABLE XV. RESULTS OF MENTAL TESTS IN A SELECTED 

SCHOOL 



Pupil 


Mental 


Intelligence 


Pupil 


Mental 


Intelligence 


number 


age 


quotient 


number 


age 


quotient 


I 


5-0 


76 


23 


7-0 


80 


2 


7-1 


76 


24 


13-0 


106 


3 


7-1 1 


103 


25 


14-7 


no 


4 


7-9 


79 


26 


9-4 


73 


5 


6-II 


100 


27 


7-9 


83 


6 


8-4 


91 


28 


9-8 


80 


7 


15-7 


128 


29 


7-8 


68 


8 


IO-8 


100 


30 


14-0 


no 


9 


15-0 


123 


31 


9-10 


78 


lO 


II-IO 


84 


32 


9-0 


93 


11 


13-7 


108 


33 


II-O 


108 


12 


10-9 


132 


34 


12-4 


80 


13 


9-2 


96 


35 


9-0 


95 


14 


ii-i 


100 


36 


8-0 


92 


15 


13-9 


138 


37 


10-6 


85 


i6 


9-7 


lOI 


38 


lO-I 


73 


17 


8-5 


71 


39 


8-6 


ICO 


i8 


lO-O 


90 


40 


9-1 


85 


19 


7-9 


95 


41 


12-0 


83 


20 


10-6 


70 


42 


13-9 


102 


21 


13-5 


108 


43 


8-7 


73 


22 


8-6 


82 









TABLE XVI. 



Pupil 
number 

I 
2 



4 

5 

19 
23 
27* 
29* 



4c* 



PUPILS WITH MENTAL AGES BELOW EIGHT 
YEARS 

{Daia Jrom Table XV) 



Mental 


Intelligence 


age 


quotient 


5-0 


76 


7-1 


76 


7-1 1 


103 


7-9 


79 


6-1 1 


100 


7-9 


95 


7-0 


80 


7-9 


83 


7-8 


68 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 121 

All the others in this table will therefore go to make up the 
first grade. 

Next let us consider the mental-age group from 8-0 to 
8-1 1 and list them in Table XVII. Part of these belong in 

TABLE XVII. PUPILS WITH MENTAL AGES BETWEEN EIGHT 

AND NINE 



Pupil 
number 

6* 

17 
22 

36* 
39* 
43 

the third grade and part in the second. We will choose 
those with intelligence quotients of 90 or better for the 
third grade and mark each of their numbers with a star. 
The second grade will then consist of pupils 17, 22, and 43 
from Table XVII and pupils 3, and 19 from Table XVI. 

Table XVIII lists the pupils of the mental-age group 
from 9-0 to 9-1 1. The starred numbers (intelligence 
quotients of 90 or above) will be placed in the fourth 
grade, while the rest, together with the starred numbers 
from Table XVII, will make up the third grade. 



{Data from Table 


XV) 




Mental 




Intelligence 


age 




quotient 


8-4 




91 


8-5 




71 


8-6 




82 


8-0 




92 


8-6 




100 


8-7 




73 



TABLE XVIII. 


PUPILS WITH MENTAL AGES 
AND TEN 

{Data from Table XV) 


BETWEEN ] 


Pupil 


Mental 


Intelligem 


number 


age 


quotient 


13* 


9-2 


96 


16* 


9-7 


lOI 


26 


9-4 


73 


28 


9-8 


80 


3^* 


9-10 


78 


32* 


9-0 


93 


35* 


9-0 


§5 


40. 


9-1 


85 



122 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Table XIX lists the age group from lo-o to lo-ii. 
From this table pupils 8, 12, and 18 will be placed in grade 
five, while pupils 20, 37, and ^8 will go with pupils 13, 16, 
32, and 35 from Table XVIII to make up the fourth grade. 

TABLE XIX. PUPILS WITH MENTAL ACES BETWEEN TEN 





ANE 


> ELEVEN 






(Data from Table XV) 




Pupil 
number 




Mental ^ 
age 


Intelligence 
* quotient 


8* 


•» 


10-8 


100 


12* 
18* 

20 

37 
38 


• 
• 


10^ 
lo-o 
10-6 
10-6 

lO-I 


132 
90 

70 , 
8^ 

. . 73 



There may be somp, question as to the advisability of 
placing pupil 18 in fiie filth grade, since his intelligence 
quotient is barely 90. On the other hand, if pupil 12 has 
had good instruction and is ambitious and industrious, he 
may be able to work in grade six, since his intelligence 
quotient of 132 shows hfm to be a pupil of very superior 
ability. The remaining^ children listed in Table XV may 
be assigned to their grades in like manner, whereupon the 
prehminary grading of the school is completed. Some 
readjusting will probably be found necessary for various 
reasons which the results of intelligence tests do not allow 
for. But when once adjusted there should be possible a 
uniformity of achievement within grades that is absolutely 
impossible in the school as ordinarily graded, where pupils 
differing in mental age by as much as five or six years are 
often found working together, or trying to work together 
in the same grade. 

As I have said before, when I first attempted to grade 
pupils there were available no standardized group intelli- 
gence tests that would cover all the giades. I therefore 



SOME USES FOR INTELLIGENCE TESTS 123 

used achievement tests for grading purposes, as explained 
in chapter iv. Although that grading has proved satis- 
factory, and although Table XIV plainly shows it agrees 
closely with the grading that would have been made if 
intelligence tests had been used, nevertheless, if I had any 
more preliminary grading to do, I should do it with the 
group intelligence tests supplemented by the Binet-Simon 
individual test wherever there was any doubt of the ac- 
curacy of the results of the group tests. 



CHAPTER X 

REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS TO 
STANDARDIZED TESTS 

After having set forth my own views as to the value of 
standardized tests in improving the efficiency of the 
schools, and after having described in considerable detail 
my methods of using the tests for such a purpose, it oc- 
curred to me that it would be only fair to give the teachers 
and pupils a chance to tell their side of the story; to tell in 
what ways, if any, standardized tests had been of benefit 
to them. If the work carried on with the tests for two 
years had been as successful as I had judged it to be from 
my point of view, the reports from the majority of the 
teachers and pupils should be favorable and would thus 
afford considerable support to my own views as published. 
If their reports were not favorable, then many of the 
values I had claimed for the tests would have to be dis- 
counted and some of them would have to be declared 
entirely imaginary. 

Accordingly, all the teachers were invited to submit a 
short paper on the advantages of using standardized tests, 
this paper to be based wholly on their own two years' 
experience in using the tests in their schools. Nineteen 
teachers responded. The papers were v/ell shuffled before 
any of them had been read, and every other one beginning 
with the first was then chosen for reproduction here. 
Afterward those not chosen were read, and all were found 
to be in the same vein except three which were unfavor- 
able. It was mere chance that none of the unfavorable 
ones were drawn for reproduction. 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 125 

One of the papers which expressed unfavorable opinions 
of standardized tests was from a very excellent teacher of 
many years' experience and very thorough training in the 
normal schools of twenty-five years ago. In fact she had 
taught several years in teacher-training schools as a young 
woman. The fact that she had fallen from high estate to 
the level of a small rural school speaks for itself. She had 
got into a rut which was too comfortable to leave for new 
pathways. Worse still, her mind, during the last stages of 
its plasticity, had apparently been caught in that violent 
agitation of ten or a dozen years ago which declared any 
sort of test or examination to be a cruel abomination, 
highly detrimental to the physical, mental, and moral 
health of its victims. That agitation was, of course, a 
reaction against the foolish, unreasonable, and unjust 
so-called examinations in vogue in city schools at that 
time. This particular teacher's mind seems to have 
crystallized at that point, and she now has absolutely no 
use for any kind of a test. She had heard of standardized 
tests and that was about all. She would not discuss their 
purpose or advantages nor try to see any good in them. 
She gave them carefully and painstakingly as required, 
but without interest and under protest, so that neither she 
nor her school derived much benefit from them. 

Another of the unfavorable responses was from a local 
crank with no special training and little education. She 
had " kept school " for many years and had acquired a 
local reputation as a " smart " teacher mostly on account 
of her disciplinary ability which was of the lowest order. 
She had few of the qualifications of a successful teacher 
and almost no conception of a teacher's most important 
duties and responsibilities. No newfangled notions for her. 

The third was from a young teacher, daughter of a 
school board member, who had little interest in anything 



126 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

but her salary and a good time. Standardized tests took 
up too much of her " spare time." I cannot consider any 
one of these papers as reflecting seriously upon the value 
of standardized tests. 

The following are the eight papers chosen for reproduc- 
tion: 

What the Teachers Think of the Tests 

My appreciation of having had the privilege of introducing 
standardized tests in my school cannot be too strongly empha- 
sized. Before I began using these tests under the guidance of 
Superintendent Brooks, I had always depended upon my own 
selection of twenty or thirty questions (examinations so 
called, and dreaded by the pupils) to be thought out and pre- 
pared before school opened in September, then again in June. 
How much better to have these tests scientifically prepared 
for us! 

No school can accurately determine the progress of its pupils, 
either as a group or individually, without using these tests. 

One of the greatest advantages, after obtaining the results 
of the tests on the graph cards, is that they show just wherein 
the teacher or the individual pupil has succeeded or failed. 
Nearly every pupil is interested in studying his graph card to 
discover his weak points and is desirous of exhibiting and 
explaining the card to his parents. With the help of such 
concrete evidence as these cards furnish one can face an irate 
parent with much greater assurance when he or she demands 
to know why James was not promoted. 

One essential of classroom instruction is to have some 
scientific method of measuring the progress of pupils and classes. 
Up to quite recently we have been unable to compare accu- 
rately teacher with teacher, school with school, and pupil with 
pupil. The standardized tests furnish us with standards by 
means of which such comparisons can be fairly and accurately 
made. 

E. M. W. 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 127 

I now consider standardized tests the only fair means of 
measuring a pupil's ability and progress in his studies. For 
several years I had been reading about the tests and of course 
realized, after five years of trying to grade rural schools accord- 
ing to my own standard of efficiency or those of the super- 
intendent, that we needed something of the sort; but I did not 
believe that a method had been found that would truly work 
until I used standardized tests this year in the Chocorua school 
under Superintendent Brooks. 

I was eager to give the first tests out of curiosity and I 
watched with much interest the attitude of the children towards 
them. They were alert, quiet, and determined. The fact that 
they were being measured by a fair standard in comparison with 
thousands of other boys and girls made them feel the "exams" 
were going to be really important and worth while. They knew 
that whatever work they did would be appreciated at its true 
value and corrected fairly, and that the results would be an 
accurate index of their achievement. 

When I corrected the tests I became enthusiastic. The 
saving of time and energy from the old method of examina- 
tions, and, above all, the fact that they showed up in every 
study the weak points of each pupil was truly remarkable. 
I became so interested that I read Monroe's Measuring the 
Results of Teaching and Educational Tests and Measurements 
through again, understandingly at last, and even sent to the 
State Library for further information. 

After copying the graph cards I knew exactly where to 
begin with each pupil to make up his or her deficiencies. The 
whole school was weak in decimals, and I did not even realize 
it until the tests proved the fact. 

The second time I gave the tests I put aside every study and 
gave them all in two days. I did not let the pupils know that 
they were coming until the morning we began work. When 
their graph cards came back the last time the children could 
hardly wait to see them. They are going to make copies of 
the cards and try "on their own" to come up to standard in 
every subject in the spring term. 



128 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

It is the spirit we want — the spirit of fair play, competition, 
and desire to work hard for a definite goal. I hope every 
teacher in the district has found her v/ork with the tests as 
inspiring and helpful as I have. 

V. L. W. 

I think that standardized tests are the greatest boon that 
has ever been invented for the benefit of teachers, especially 
for those who are interested in, and conscientiously working to 
obtain, the best possible results with each child. 

These tests save the teacher both work and worry — the 
former by having the questions prepared and valued without 
aid from the teacher, and the latter because the teacher now 
has the comfort of knowing that even though Helen may fall a 
few points below grade when the scores are added, it is no 
fault in reckoning valuation of questions and exercises or in 
computing ranks. There is proof enough even to convince an 
irate parent if occasion demands. 

Furthermore, standardized tests show a teacher where the 
weak points are in the pupils' work so that she can conserve 
time and effort by drilling each child upon the particular line 
of work in which he or she is below grade, instead of upon the 
curriculum as a whole without regard to the standing of 
individual pupils in particular studies. Without the tests there 
is no accurate way of telling what grade a pupil belongs in. 

Last, but not least, these tests show a teacher whether she is 
gaining or losing in skill according to the progress made by 
children of average ability under her control. This knowledge, 
either way, has proven a stimulant to me, as I have been able 
with my superintendent's aid to, in part at least, correct many 
faults and realize others that need to be corrected in order to 
make my teaching more efficient. 

L. E. M. 

I have become a firm believer in standardized tests. During 
the two years they have been used in my school, I have found 
them to be a source of help and an incentive to better work on 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 129 

the part of the pupils. I consider them a fair test of the ability 
and progress of the pupils both individually and as a school. 

By means of them, the teacher is able to discover readily 
the weak points in the work of her pupils. This enables her to 
know which pupils need special help. By giving this special 
help she is enabled to raise the standard of her school as a 
whole as well as aid the individual pupil to keep up to grade. 

To me, another proof that these tests are helpful is the fact 
that they create a marked degree of enthusiasm on the part 
of the pupils. They look forward eagerly to the "testing 
time," each one eager to do his or her best. I beheve that the 
enthusiasm thus aroused is a stepping-stone to better work 
and, therefore, to better results, the goal for which we, as 
teachers, are striving. 

A. N. H. 

Standard tests have helped me first, because they determine 
what points in each course of study need the greatest amount 
of emphasis and drill. Of course, that does not mean that we 
should drill on the exact material used in any of the tests; 
for that would be unfair to the test by rendering it valueless for 
accurate measurements. However, they do point out the 
kinds of things which should receive most attention in the case 
of a particular pupil, class, or school. 

Too often in rural schools the grading has been left to the 
teacher's judgment — quite frequently to the judgment of a 
teacher untrained and inexperienced. How can such grading 
be uniform with no set standard for a guide? While the State 
Program outlines the courses of study for each grade, it does 
not set any standards of speed, accuracy, and thoroughness 
with which the work shall be covered. Here again, standard 
tests solve the problem. They prevent us from trying to 
produce expert accountants as well as from allowing children 
to fall into the slipshod habit of using all the time they desire 
for a task. 

Every teacher has certain weak points. That is, her teach- 
ing ability is of a higher order in some subjects than in others. 



130 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

But how can the teacher herself be made to realize her failings? 
Certainly not always from her own observation, for self-criti- 
cism is bound to be lenient. She may resent the most tactful 
criticisms from others, but she must realize that the standards 
set by thousands of children are not unreasonable for the 
children of her school and that if the majority of them do not 
attain to these standards, she herself is chiefly at fault. 

Tests which determine the mental ability of the individual 
child are invaluable. Much worry and nervous strain on the 
part of the teacher as well as of the child may be avoided by 
study of the results obtained from such tests. It may be said 
that from daily association a teacher is able to gauge accurately 
the pupil's grade of mentality, but in many cases this is proved 
to be incorrect. A mental examination is as important as a 
physical examination. The teacher may expect too much of a 
pupil who is utterly incapable of doing the work required of 
him. In this case the child becomes discouraged — sometimes 
nervous — and unable to learn even to the extent to which he 
would be capable under conditions normal to him. On the 
other hand, the teacher may fall too easily into the habit of 
allowing the mentally deficient child to fall below his own 
standard. 

Some children seem to be in a state of mental lethargy from 
one cause or another and need some slight stimulus to arouse 
their better ability. The test, being something unusual, often 
arouses their interest and unconsciously they use their ability 
to think. Once the results are obtained, it is, in many cases, 
an easy matter to get better results all around, merely because 
of knowing that the child is capable of better things. 

Finally, it seems to me that the results received from the 
use of standardized tests showing progress or lack of it on the 
part of pupils are a much fairer means of judging the teacher's 
ability than mere observation or hearsay. Results count, no 
matter what the method. H. H. E. 

I heartily believe that the standardized tests are of inesti- 
y mable value to my school. The children realize the benefits 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 131 

derived from the tests and are always eager to see their graphs 
as soon as their scores have been recorded. 

Since it is an acknowledged fact that the general aim of 
education is social efficiency, it is up to us as teachers to place 
a great amount of stress on the " tool " subjects. In these sub- 
jects certain standards have been established so that we may 
know when our pupils have acquired the desired proficiency 
in each subject. Through these standards it is possible for us 
to learn many things: first, the weak spots in our teaching, so 
that we may know to what part of the work we should give more 
emphasis and drill; second, the tests enable us to select the 
individual pupils who need our special attention in certain 
subjects; third, the comparison of my graph cards with those 
from other schools certainly proves a motive for better work on 
my part and the same thing proves true when the individual 
pupil compares his graph card with that of his classmate; 
fourth, through the results of the standardized tests the super- 
intendent and the public in general are, or may be, kept in 
close touch with the everyday work of the schools. Thus, if 
we do our best, and that best is good, we are rewarded for our 
efforts by the appreciation of those interested in the betterment 
of education, as well as by the knowledge that we are doing 
something really worth while. 

In conclusion, I feel safe in saying that the standardized 
test, as a means of scientific measurement, is one of the great- 
est contributions ever offered to education. 

E. M. W. 

After a fairly long experience in a single grade, I found myself 
facing the problem of rendering sufficiently elastic to cover 
seven grades the minutes and the mental energy formerly 
devoted to one. The problem, to me, did not become any 
easier from the fact that the school was under unusually alert 
supervision. Also, my experience has bestowed upon me a 
number of things, among them a knowledge of what is due the 
children and a fairly accurate idea of my own limitations. I 
will pass over the adjustment period, at the beginning of the 



132 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

term, to that which I at first considered as merely another 

"superintendent's hobby," standardized tests. 

Now a little enthusiasm is a much more constructive emo- 
tion than mild toleration, especially in dealing with the inevi- 
table, so I met the tests with what I could command on short 
notice. To-day I consider that the tests have been a great 
help in facing the single schoolroom of many grades. How 
much might they not accomplish in one grade in the develop- 
ment of different groups within the class! Most teachers know 
that no program of classes can be iron-bound and successful 
at the same time. Right here came my first great aid from 
standardized tests and the resulting graphs. They enabled 
me to adjust the program to the needs of this particular school 
as a whole. Then as a study of the graphs revealed the strength 
and weakness of individuals, weak points were the subjects of 
special attention. For instance, in grade four, Ann, Lucy, 
and Tom readily understand anything that they are able to 
read, while Jarnes and Edith are slow in grasping the thought 
and often do not arrive at all. James and Edith are given 
much personal drill, while the others are kept at attention that 
there may be no regression on their part. On the other hand, 
Lucy and Tom are held rigidly to account when it comes to 
number work. Thus the limited time may be used to the best 
advantage. 

George's graph disclosed the fact that, with an intelligence 
quotient of 112, in multipHcation and subtraction he was far 
below grade. This indicated need of drill in these two essen- 
tials which was faithfully administered. George's graph line 
is now rapidly approaching normal. I discovered that the 
reading vocabulary and the history of the entire school were 
considerably below my personal estimate of the facts. Again 
the proper remedy was indicated by the graphs. 

Further study of the graphs brought to light a number of 
points below grade in problem work. A consideration of the 
intelligence quotients, followed by a little introspection, placed 
the blame squarely at my own door. 

Thus these tests, given at definite periods, act as a sort of 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 133 

efficiency expert to hold us to account. They uncover our 
weaknesses and by way of encouragement show us our good 
points. They also are of considerable tonic value. They offer 
a definite goal and I find that they are the subject of a very 
genuine enthusiasm among the children. 

Personally they are satisfying, as they are a protection 
against the unfair and difficult tests given by the average 
superintendent or teacher. If one has had any experience with 
superintendents' " unstandardized tests," it is gratifying to 
feel that one's pupils are being held up to a standard which has 
been carefully worked out among many children and is entirely 
possible of achievement with a reasonable expenditure of time 
and energy; that, and the knowledge that the mental age and 
general intelligence of each pupil is considered, contributes a 
serenity infrequently associated with the "examination" 
period. 

As time goes on, the tests themselves will probably vary and 
improve. If widely adopted they will render our educational 
procedure more uniform in efficiency; and children with parents 
of nomadic tendencies or changing business affiliations will not 
suffer so great a loss of time, pride, and ambition of being "put 
back " every time they enter a new school. 

G. E. D. 

I certainly think that the standardized tests are fine. They 
are a great benefit to the children. I find that a child who 
takes the standard tests two or three times a year does much 
better work, and also does it much more quickly. The chil- 
dren enjoy them; at least mine do. Instead of dreading an 
''examination" as they used to do, they are simply overjoyed 
at the prospect of taking a "test." 

A teacher cannot, by means of ordinary examinations, know 
how her pupils compare with other children of the same age 
and grade in other schools, but by using the standard tests 
she can determine their relative standing and whether they 
need extra time devoted to certain subjects. 

Of course they make extra work for the teacher, but if she 



134 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

has the welfare of her pupils at heart (as every teacher should 
have) she will not mind extra work. 

I have been a teacher for twenty-nine years and never heard 
of the tests until two years ago, since which time I have been 
using them under the direction of Superintendent Brooks. I 
should not care to teach again without them. 

G. E. S. 

This last tribute to the efficiency of standardized tests 
comes from a teacher who has just finished her twenty- 
ninth year as teacher in the same little rural school. Up 
to two years ago her own education was limited to the 
eight grades of the very school she has been teaching so 
long in her home district. She attended the summer ses- 
sion of a normal school last summer and is planning to go 
again this summer. 

When I asked the teachers to write their opinions of 
standardized tests, I also asked them to have all the 
children above the fourth grade write what they thought 
of the tests. Below are a number of the papers submitted 
by the children. With the exception of corrections in 
spelling they are submitted just as the children wrote them, 
with no attempt to smooth over the crudities. 

These are not selected papers chosen for effect. They 
were picked out from the nearly two hundred papers re- 
ceived in such a way that each school would be repre- 
sented by two papers. The papers from each school were 
thoroughly shuffled and then the third and seventh papers 
from the top of each pile were taken for publication. 

What the Pupils Think of the Tests 

The tests help us to learn. I think I have improved since the 
last test. I was below grade by the tests the first time, but 
came up this time. They tell me I must work hard on the 
fundamentals of arithmetic and spelling and reading. I am 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 135 

going to try to go up again next time. I like the tests very 
much. 

E. E. W. 

I think the tests have helped me in many ways. They have 
helped me to work both faster and better, and I have more 
interest in getting ahead in my studies. I like all the tests, 
but I like the arithmetic tests best. 

L. M. D. 

I like the tests very much and I know that they help me in 
many ways. The arithmetic tests are very nice and I improved 
a lot in them. I was sorry to find that I did not come up to my 
grade in addition and division on the last test, but I am going 
to see that I come up to grade in them next time. I was glad 
to see that I did much better with the tests this time than I did 
the last time. 

D. L. 

I like the tests because I think they help me to do better 
work. The first time I took the tests I ranked way below my 
grade, but the second time I came up nearly to where I be- 
longed. The last time I found I was behind in the reasoning 
test and the language tests. 

T. V. 

The tests we have had have helped me very much, especially 
the arithmetic tests because there were so many different kinds 
of examples. I did not come up much in the reasoning tests, 
but I am going to work hard and get a better graph next time. 
The Hahn-Lackey Geography Scale helped me greatly. I like 
to study it. Then when I study in my books I can pick out 
the important things better. 

G. H. M. 

I improved on the tests very much. I like the tests. The 
first time I had them I measured below my grade, but the 



136 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

second time I had them I did very much better. I had to 
work very hard on multiplication and spelling. I was very 
pleased when I saw my last graph card. 

A. W. 

I think the tests are a great help to us. They teach us to 
work quickly and correctly. They show us what we need the 
most. On my graph in some things I was below my grade so 
those are the things I have got to study up on. I was below my 
grade in writing. I had to work mostly on Geography and 
History. 

V. M. 

I have done better in all my lessons since we have been hav- 
ing the tests and I think they are very nice. Since we have 
been having the tests if one was in the third grade and belonged 
in the fourth he is put where he belongs and I think that is 
right. I like the arithmetic tests best, but I like the rest of 
them too. I am always glad when it is time to begin our tests 
and am sorry when we have no more. I was weak on some 
things and now I know what they are and am going to work up 
on them. 

R. L. 

I for one in this school do not like the standardized tests. 
It is true that in some ways they help us, but in some ways they 
do not. They help us to work quickly, but how about accu- 
racy? We do not have time to think, and put down things that 
after we do think we know are not right. Some of the tests 
that help me are Reading and Grammar, but Arithmetic I hate 
and always shall. I think the standardized tests are more 
beneficial to the younger scholars than to the older ones. I 
hope they will stop having those tests as they get on my nerves. 

F. M. 

I think that the standardized tests are a great help to us. 
We can tell by looking at the graph card what grade we are in 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 137 

and whether we are in the grade that we should be in. They 
help us, for we compare our graph cards with those of our 
classmates. When we are given standardized tests we know 
that we are rated fairly. A. H. 

The tests help us to compare our work with our classmates, 
with other classes, and also with other schools. When we get 
our ranks from the graph cards we know what studies we need 
to study more. We also know that we are being rated fairly. 

W. A. 

I think the tests are very good for us. They tell exactly 
where one belongs, and one don't get put above his grade or 
below. It helps the teacher too, for they do not rank us by 
guess. The mixed fundamentals are good because they show 
us whether we can do arithmetic all mixed up or not. But best 
of all I like the standardized tests in Geography, especially 
those upon states and cities. I do not like the spelling test at 
all. It is more like dictation work to me. I hope I make my 
grade by these tests this year. The standardized tests are 
surely a help and I hope we will have them all the time. 

R. K. L. 

I think the standardized tests are the best kind to have. 
They tell us where we pupils belong and what we have to work 
up on. They tell us what we are weak in. They can't push 
us ahead if we don't belong there. The Mixed Fundamentals 
are exactly what we need. I like them very much, I don't 
know of anything better that we could have. They tell us 
what grade we belong in. I have done much better with them 
than I did last year. H. A. D. 

I like the standardized tests. I think they are just what we 
need. I like the arithmetic best. The tests put us where we 
belong. I like the tests better this year than I did last year. 
I think I did better in the tests than I did last year too. 

J. F. 



138 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

I think the tests are very fair. Some of them are Just what 
I like and some of them are not. The Mixed Fundamentals 
I do not like. I did not have them when I first began to come 
to school. I like them better than the old tests. 

S. F. L. ' 

I like the tests very much. I think they are fair, too. 
I like to take the Geography tests better than the others, but 
I think I will like the others after I know more about their 
subjects. I don't like the Mixed Fundamentals. I found I was 
below my grade in long columns of addition. I like the gram- 
mar tests, but not quite so well as the others. I hope I will get 
my grade in everything next term by the tests. They are very 
interesting and I hope we will have them always because any- 
body can tell just where she is. It gives us more courage to do 
our work well. 

M. L. 

I think the standardized tests are very interesting and also 
think they are the fairest of any tests I ever took. I enjoy 
them very much and hope they will continue to use them. 
They tell exactly where a child belongs. I don't like the Mixed 
Fundamentals very well. I found when I took the tests I fell 
down in long division. I hope that I get my grade next June 
so that I can be promoted. 

E. G. 

The tests are valuable to me because I compare my graph 
card with my classmates and if I am behind in anything I try 
to study harder to keep up. One class may be behind the other. 
They try to keep up with other classes that are ahead of them. 
It helps us to keep up with other schools because they can com- 
pare our school with others. And we know we are rated as we 
should be by standardized tests. L. D. 

I think that the graph card which is a record of the result 
of Standard Tests, is a very good idea. I can compare my 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 139 

graph card with that of my classmate. By looking at my card 
I can tell what studies I am below my grade in, and so know 
what subjects I need to study most. E. G. H. 

The graph cards which tell the results of the tests are a great 
help to the pupils because we can compare our marks with 
those of our classmates and it tells us whether we did as well 
as our classmates or better, and how much. It also tells us 
in what studies we went below grade so we know what to study 
harder. It helps the teacher because they can find out what 
to let us put more time on. It helps the superintendent 
because he can compare our school with another. It helps 
the public because they can tell what the schools are doing. 
We know when we take the Standard Tests we will get fair play. 

E. M. G. 

I think the standardized tests are a good thing. They show 
you where you stand in your studies and whether you are 
keeping up in your grade or not. They help you to work with 
greater speed and accuracy. They are of benefit to you because 
they show how much you can get out of a lesson. They show 
you that, if you can't keep up with your grade, you can fall 
back into a lower grade. They also show you whether you are 
far enough advanced to be put in a higher grade. 

I. M. 

I think the tests are a great help to me and some special ones 
like addition, subtraction, and Mixed Fundamentals have 
made me quicker in my work. I like to do them. They help 
me in my everyday work. I can add and subtract quicker. If 
it was n't for them I would n't know whether I passed my grade 
or not. I would like to have them every day. I think it is fun 
to do the tests. 

A. H. M. 

The tests the teacher gives us are very easy. We are allowed 
five, ten, and sometimes twenty-five minutes. The tests I like 



I40 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

best are reading and History. I do not like arithmetic as I 
cannot remember my tables. The tests are a very good thing 
for every girl and boy in school, as they show them if they are 
above or below their grade. I do not sympathize with the 
school children or teachers, as I hate going to school. I can 
learn more by reading library books and going to places. 

E. M. 

During the past two years, since we have had a superintend- 
ent, we have had standardized tests which I have enjoyed very 
much, especially the Courtis Geography tests, although I 
should like to have them more often. They are all very help- 
ful. The Courtis Standard Practice Pads that we have every 
morning help to develop speed as well as accuracy. I am espe- 
cially interested to note the progress on my graph card. 

J. L. C. 

I think all the tests are very interesting and helpful. We 
shall be glad when the tests come again in June. Then we can 
see if we are going to be promoted. M. R. D. 

I did not enter this school until late last fall because my 
parents just moved here from Providence, Rhode Island. All 
of the other children had been given the standardized tests 
before I entered, so the teacher gave them to me to determine 
what grade I should be in. When I got my graph card back 
it showed just where I belonged. These tests help me to think 
more quickly and I can see that they have been a great help 
in many ways. We have the Courtis Arithmetic Practice Pads 
every morning. All the children seem to be very interested in 
the tests and their results as recorded on the graph cards. 

P. N. G. 

We have only had standardized tests in our schools for two 
years. When our superintendent first brought these tests to 
us we were not very much interested, but since our teacher has 
explained the results on our graphs we have become very much 



REACTION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 141 

interested indeed. The tests that I enjoy most are the Stu- 
dent's Record and Practice Pad by Stuart A. Courtis, the 
Fundamentals of arithmetic by Clifford Woody, and the Silent 
Reading tests by Walter S. Monroe. I would like to have these 
tests more often than three times a year. 

H. L. A. 

I like all the tests that we have had only I would like to have 
them more often than we do. Of all the tests I think I like 
the Courtis Silent Reading Test the best. We think that it is 
great fun and would like to have them every day if we could. 
The Courtis Practice Pads that we have every morning have 
helped me more than any other. Can't we have some more 
tests that can be given every day? W. F. G. 

The standardized tests have helped me in various ways, to 
think quickly and to read rapidly and silently and yet get 
the meaning of what I have read. They tell exactly what I am 
expected to do and in that way help me not to be careless, 
because if I look at the top of the paper and what it says there 
I know what to do. If I did n't look I would do something 
wrong. For example, if it said to subtract and I did n't pay 
any attention to it and multiplied, I would get the example 
wrong. The tests seem to me something like a game; trying 
to do something in so many seconds or minutes and get it 
correct. I do not mind them as much as tests which the 
teacher makes up and gives me because it seems as though she 
takes the very hardest things she can for me to do and gives 
the others something much easier. But with the standard tests 
there are just as hard things for one to do in my grade as 
another. E. G. 

I like the tests very much. I like the spelling and reading 
tests best of all. I am always glad when the tests come round. 
I think the tests are very nice and helpful. I enjoy them very 
much. I try to improve each time we have them. 

E. J. D. 



142 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

I like the tests and am always glad when they come round. 
I think it is hard to change over to the new way of writing, 
but I am trying to do it. I hope I shall do better in my next 
test. I like the arithmetic tests best and the English tests the 
least of any. I think they are all very helpful. M. I. S. 

I am always glad when we have the tests. I try to do better 
every time they come round. I like them very much. I like 
the arithmetic the best. I think the tests are a very nice thing 
and I think they help us a lot. I hope we have some more 
very soon. E. M. S. 

The above papers are, I think, fairly representative of 
the opinions of the school children of this district in regard 
to standardized tests. Is there not a convincing sermon 
here for the educator who is not too much addicted to 
spinning beautiful theories out of his head to be a student 
of child nature? Is there not a lesson for teachers and 
superintendents who are willing to seek the child's point of 
view in order to make the teaching process more efficient 
by taking advantage of his likes and dislikes? 

At any rate, the papers show that the children have 
grasped and appreciated the principal advantages that the 
use of standardized tests has for them. To sum up, they 
appreciate them as interesting, as motivating, as eminently 
fair, as setting up definite standards of achievement to 
work for, and as giving them a means of comparing their 
work with that of their classmates. 

The record of the progress of pupils as measured by 
standardized tests and recorded on the graph cards, to- 
gether with the testimony of teachers and pupils as above 
set forth, seems to me to be conclusive evidence that the 
use of standardized tests is tremendously worth while in 
rural schools or in any other school for which they are 
available. . 



CHAPTER XI 

READING AIMS AND METHODS 

Modification of Methods and Materials is Part of a 
Testing Program 

Although standardized tests may be ever so useful in 
discovering the performance of pupils relative to grade 
norms, in helping to decide when pupils are ready for pro- 
motion, in determining the efficiency of teachers, and so 
on, nevertheless the benefits of a systematized testing 
program cannot be fully realized unless a careful study of 
results leads to the modification of the methods and mate- 
rials of instruction in such a way as to improve the quan- 
tity and quahty of classroom products. The carrying-out 
of such modifications and the retesting to measure their 
effectiveness is as much a part of an intelligent testing 
program as is the measuring of progress or testing for 
diagnostic purposes. Indeed, what is the use of diagnosis 
without follow-up treatment? For a physician to say 
that a patient has pneumonia is of little consequence unless 
he administers the proper treatment. And what would 
be the value of medical records of cases if the records 
did not contain descriptions of the procedures following 
diagnoses and of the results of such procedures? 

It may seem at first thought that the topic " Reading 
Aims and Methods " is beyond the scope of this book. 
But the reading methods and materials now in use in this 
district are so directly the outgrowth of efforts to remedy 
the conditions revealed by tests of silent-reading ability, 
and so essential do some such methods and materials 
appear to be in developing silent-reading ability as meas- 
ured by the tests, that I believe a detailed discussion of 



144 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

them should be included in the exposition of any scheme 
for getting the utmost practical benefits from the syste- 
matic periodical use of standardized tests. 

Drill in Oral Reading does not Ensure Silent- 
Reading Ability 

A DISCUSSION of the conditions disclosed by the first tests 
is given in a previous chapter. The low level of reading 
efficiency revealed throughout the district by the results of 
these first tests was conclusive proof that the customary 
oral-reading drill was not developing the sort of reading 
ability that the tests measure. Yet the tests measure the 
kind of reading ability that it is most important for the 
pupils to acquire, namely, the ability to gather ideas 
silently, rapidly, and accurately from the printed page. 
Teachers, however, habitually try to develop reading 
ability through practice in word-pronouncing, supple- 
mented sometimes by more or less efficient drill in enuncia- 
tion, articulation, and proper expression. By the end of 
the eighth or ninth grade, most pupils have learned to 
recognize and pronounce a sufficiently large number of 
words to enable them to give at least a phonograph-like 
rendering of untechnical printed matter — minus in most 
cases the intelligent expression which a phonograph re- 
produces so perfectly. Since the chief measure of reading 
efficiency is the teacher's judgment of proper expression 
and pronunciation regardless of whether or not the words 
and sentences read mean anything to the reader, this oral 
evidence of the ability to translate printed symbols into 
the sounds which they represent is misconstrued into evi- 
dence of real reading ability. Indeed, when we measure 
oral-reading ability — as we do by means of Gray's test — 
we estimate the performance of the pupil solely on the 
basis of the way he pronounces the words. 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 145 

This may account for the fact that so many pupils with 
fair oral-reading ability can do little more with the content 
subjects than to give parrot-like repetitions of facts 
memorized from the texts. We ask teachers to assign 
project-problem work to the upper grades in geography, 
history, and science. They reply that most pupils, even 
when they have full instructions and outlines to work by, 
are helpless in carrying on anything like independent 
study, and that rote memory work seems to be the limit 
of their achievement in these subjects. If this is a true 
statement of the case, we are rightly led to inquire whose 
fault it is that upper-grade children cannot read with 
understanding. 

To be sure, some of the more intelligent pupils really 
learn to read, not because of proper drill and instruction, 
but because of superior native ability. Such pupils are 
actuated by the necessity of reading for comprehension in 
learning their geography and history lessons, and by their 
love of books in general. They do much silent reading 
outside of school. In other words, they learn to read 
mostly through self-imposed practice in silent reading. 
Accordingly, since some pupils in time learn to read in 
spite of poor teaching methods, and since most pupils 
learn how to pronounce a few hundred common words, a 
false idea of the efficiency of oral-reading drill has long 
persisted — an idea fostered by wrong aims in teaching 
and a lack of intelligent method in measuring results. 

The Way to Improve Silent Reading is to Teach 

Silent Reading 

Lately, however, the revolutionary idea has occurred to 
some people that the most efficient way to teach reading 
is by actual class drill in reading and not by practice in 
speaking as heretofore. Strange, is n't it, how long it has 



146 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

taken even a few school people to reach such an obviously 
sensible conclusion? Yet music teachers have always 
known that piano playing could be taught much more 
effectively through actual piano practice under instruction 
than by means of singing lessons. Moreover, one does 
not teach children to swim by giving them skating lessons. 

After considering all the reasons we could think of for 
the almost universally poor reading ability revealed by the 
scores in silent-reading tests, we decided that the chief 
reason was that the pupils had never been drilled in that 
kind of reading. Oral-reading drill, and that very poorly 
conducted as a rule, was the only kind of reading drill they 
had ever known. It had, of course, failed to develop the 
type of ability measured by the standardized tests. Other 
contributing factors were lack of vocabulary knowledge, 
as revealed by the visual vocabulary tests, and bad habits 
of silent reading, such as lip movements, which prevent 
the attainment of speed. 

Oral-reading drill does not ensure the development of 
silent-reading ability because the mental processes in- 
volved, and hence the brain centers brought into play, are 
very different in the two kinds of reading. It is a good 
deal like trying to develop the muscles of the arms through 
exercising the legs. Furthermore, oral-reading drill does 
not, as has been shown, ensure the pupil's understanding 
of what he reads. A pupil may be able to pronounce the 
words of a passage perfectly; he may also, through a 
mechanical minding of punctuation, convey the author's 
thoughts to the hearer without himself comprehending 
them at all. Yet comprehension is one of the two main 
factors of efficiency in silent reading. 

The ability to recognize and pronounce words and 
phrases is no true evidence that their meaning is under- 
stood, A phonograph can reproduce perfectly the words 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 147 

that are spoken into it, but surely nobody would argue 
from this circumstance that the words have any meaning 
to the machine. Just so can the child repeat words which 
have been pronounced for him by the teacher without 
having much conception of the ideas which the words 
represent. He can become so familiar with their visual 
forms as to recognize them instantly on the printed page 
and pronounce them in consecutive order so that they can 
be understood by others, and still they may have almost 
no meaning to him. This point will be clear to any one 
who has acquired during his high-school days a reading 
knowledge of a foreign language, and who has given it no 
thought for several years until his vocabulary has so nearly 
faded from memory that in scanning a printed page of the 
language he can find only here and there a word that means 
any more to him than a jumble of letters and sounds. 
Yet he can pronounce most of the words as well as he ever 
could and can probably read the whole page orally, al- 
though with poor expression due to his inability to grasp 
the thought. There is a rather close analogy between 
such reading by an adult and the hesitating, expressionless 
oral reading of a child who does n't grasp the meaning of 
what he is reading. 

We must remember that words have no meaning in 
themselves. They are merely the visual symbols of ideas 
more or less common to the experience of the race. Until 
the learner makes these ideas his own through experience 
either direct or indirect, and connects them permanently 
in his mind with their visual symbols, the words can have 
no meaning for him, though he may be able to recognize 
them at sight and give correctly the corresponding vocal 
fqrms. So I repeat that skill in word-pronouncing is not 
conclusive evidence of reading ability, if we define reading 
ability as the ability to gather ideas from the printed page. 



148 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Oral-Reading Drill Hinders Good Reading 

Furthermore, oral-reading drill acts in at least two ways 
to prevent the formation of proper reading habits. Per- 
haps it would be better to say that it tends to the forma- 
tion of improper reading habits. 

In the first place, the fact that the pupil when reading 
aloud must concentrate his attention on punctuation, 
enunciation, articulation, and expression, precludes the 
possibility of his gathering much meaning from what he 
reads. His mind is too much occupied with the mechanics 
of oral reading. If the reader is skeptical as regards this 
point, he might profit from a little experiment. Let him 
read aloud to some one, a page from Dewey's Democracy 
and Education, remembering that he is reading to an audi- 
ence and that he must give as much expression to his read- 
ing as possible so that the audience may get the author's 
meaning. Then let him close the book and see how much 
he can tell of what he has read. After trying it, the dis- 
comfited experimenter may object that the text is too 
difiicult for a fair test. But is Dewey's masterpiece any 
more difiicult for the educated, intelligent adult than the 
ordinary school text is for the learner? Besides, the 
learner may be still further handicapped in getting the 
thought by childish self-consciousness and the constant 
expectation of being interrupted, corrected, and criticized 
by the teacher or his classmates. Have you ever consid- 
ered how harmful to the thought-getting process must be 
those constant interruptions accompanied by wildly wav- 
ing arms and hands where the reader is told that he can 
read until he makes a mistake and the class is told to 
watch for his mistakes? In oral-reading drill of this sort 
the habit is forced upon the pupil of paying more atten- 
tion to forms of words than to their meanings. In silent 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 149 

reading, however, this habit cannot but be a hindrance to 
him. 

In the second place, in oral reading every word has to be 
pronounced, a procedure that in silent reading is not only 
unnecessary but positively harmful. It absolutely pre- 
cludes the possibility of attaining a normal rate of speed. 
A good reader can read from two to four times as fast 
silently as he can orally because in reading silently he 
does n't have to pronounce words or even to consider 
single words. He grasps whole thoughts at a glance. 
But the per cent of such readers in the elementary schools 
is small. One may obtain ample proof that such is the 
case by going into any schoolroom during a study period 
in history, and noting the pupils who are not visibly pro- 
nouncing every word as they read over their lessons 
silently. True, most normal adults and some of the 
brighter children in the grades who read much do not move 
their lips in silent reading. But it is the fact that such 
persons read much that really accounts for their efficiency. 
This fact also shows that silent-reading ability can be 
developed by practice in silent reading. In other words, 
those who exhibit this ability have acquired it through much 
self-imposed silent reading rather than through school in- 
struction in oral reading. And most of them learn to 
read too late to be of help to them in their school work. 
Beyond the third or fourth grade boys and girls need to 
use reading as a tool with which to acquire the information 
contained in books. Hence the recent movement to de- 
velop efficient silent readers during the first three or four 
years of school life. 

A slow reader, then, is not an efficient reader and oral- 
reading drill tends to make slow readers by forming the 
habit of lip movement in word-pronouncing. I use the 
term " oral reading ''_ not because it is appropriate, but 



150 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

because it is the common designation applied to the type 
of drill in vogue during the " reading '^ period in most 
schools. Of course so-called " oral reading " is not really 
reading at all. It is word-pronouncing. Word-pronounc- 
ing is speaking; and speaking and reading are by no means 
synonymous terms. Their dictionary definitions bring 
out the distinction. Reading is defined as " the going over 
words or characters with comprehension of their meaning.'* 
Speaking is defined as " the utterance of articulate words 
or sounds." 

The Case against Oral Reading 

Accordingly, because it furnishes practice in speaking 
rather than in reading, I am trying to make out a case 
against " oral reading '' as the sole or even the chief means 
of developing reading ability in school children. I am not 
condemning oral-reading drill in general as a useless and 
pernicious practice. Not by any means, even though, as I 
have shown, too much of it tends to prevent the formation 
of good reading habits. But I do say that oral-reading 
drill as often, if not as ordinarily, conducted is worse than 
useless as far as developing real reading ability is con- 
cerned. It is a criminal waste of the child's time and 
opportunities and a disgrace to those who practice it while 
professing a knowledge of the art of teaching. 

We recognize the picture. A class of pupils is taking 
turns reading aloud from a book of which every one has a 
copy. The " lesson '^ has probably been read over and 
over by most of the pupils at their seats until there is 
nothing new in it to keep alive a vital interest during the 
class period. One after another each rises and drones out 
a paragraph or two, interrupted occasionally by corrections 
of too glaring errors from a yawning teacher or from class- 
mates not so busily engaged in mischief or day-dreaming 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 151 

as to be entirely oblivious of their surroundings. I have 
seen teachers correct papers, write letters, or put work on 
the board for another class while conducting (?) a class in 
what they termed " reading." The pupils each pro- 
nounced a paragraph, doing so in regular turns so that the 
teacher would not have to give her attention to stopping 
one pupil and starting another. Corrections and assist- 
ance in saying the words were left to supposedly alert 
classmates. In reality most errors went uncorrected and 
the reader skipped or stumbled over such words as he did 
not know how to pronounce. If things came to a complete 
standstill, the teacher would give her attention long enough 
to start them going again. All this in the name of educa- 
tion, with the public's money going to pay for it! Shall 
we ever have enough teachers, real teachers, to do real 
teaching in all our schools? It is such handling of " oral- 
reading " drill that I condemn and the practice does not 
need to be nearly as bad as described in order to be not 
only useless but positively harmful. 

Yet Oral Reading has its Value 

However, properly handled drill in the oral reproduction 
of printed words and sentences can be made worth while 
to the pupils. If the printed selections are used as mate- 
rial for intensive drill in pronunciation, articulation, and 
enunciation, then such drill has its proper place in develop- 
ing proper habits of speech. Used in this way, it supple- 
ments (and should probably form a part of) the oral- 
composition phase of language work. But it is not read- 
ing, and should not be permitted to replace real reading 
drill or to encroach upon the time that should be devoted 
to real reading drill. Let us find a suitable name for it and 
give it a place in the program all its own if we cannot feel 
convinced that it is a part of the regular language work. 



152 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Of course there are, especially in cities and large towns, 
many schools with highly trained teachers where oral- 
reading drill is by no means so tragically inefficient as in 
the method described above. Such inefficiency in varying 
degrees is chiefly characteristic of the rural districts, espe- 
cially of districts without expert supervision or wherein 
teachers through inherent inadaptability or acquired 
prejudice have failed to profit from expert supervision. 
In many school systems the defects of the traditional 
method have been largely remedied and oral-reading drill 
has been developed to the point where most of the possible 
benefits are derived from it. In such systems pupils are 
no longer required or even permitted to study their reading 
assignments at their seats. They read at sight fresh 
stories each day so that the important element of interest 
in something new and desirable is present during the 
reading period. Only the reader has a book. The others 
have to listen carefully if they want to get the whole story. 
Thus attention is held; especially if the teacher calls upon 
some member of the class now and then to repeat what he 
has just heard read. For the reader, the audience situa- 
tion is provided. He is reading a new and interesting 
story to his classmates. He must read his best in order 
that they may understand him as fully as possible. Under 
such conditions the criticisms of his classmates, to the 
effect that he does n't speak distinctly or loud enough, are 
apt to be much more effective than formal criticisms by the 
teacher. But in spite of all improvements, oral-reading 
drill at its best cannot develop the most valuable kind of 
reading abihty. 

Oral Reading not Necessary for Beginners 

There is a popular belief that oral-reading drill is a neces- 
sity with beginners. On the contrary, it is not necessary 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 153 

and IS probably productive of more harm than benefit. It 
is unnecessary because silent-reading methods can be used 
to good advantage from the very beginning. It is harmful 
because it starts to develop wrong reading habits in the 
child from the first. Furthermore, it is of little practical 
value even in developing oral-reading ability because no 
effective oral reading can be done until the child has ac- 
quired the ability rapidly to translate printed symbols 
directly into ideas. This ability can be developed in the 
young child only through much efficient silent-reading 
drill. Over-emphasis on oral reading in the lower grades 
is directly responsible for much of the stiff, stumbling, 
expressionless oral reading in the upper elementary grades 
and even in high school. We are requiring children to read 
orally before they have gained that proficiency in rapid 
comprehension which alone makes intelligent oral expres- 
sion possible. Their minds, wrongly trained from the 
beginning, are often unfitted for efficient reading of any 
kind. Hence, oral reading should not be introduced too 
early in the child's school life. 

The current contention, that emphasis on oral reading 
should be strong in the first grade and decreasingly so 
throughout the other grades, cannot be sustained on the 
ground that another procedure is not feasible. Neither 
can it be sustained on psychological grounds. The order 
of mental stimuli and associations is significantly different 
in the two forms of reading. In oral reading the visual 
symbol is translated first into its more familiar auditory 
symbol, the auditory image into an idea, and the idea into 
verbal expression. Indeed, with many children if not all, 
who have been brought up on oral-reading drill, verbal 
expression seems to be necessary before they can grasp the 
idea. 

On the other hand, in efl&cient silent reading the visual 



154 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

symbol is associated directly with the idea without the 
intervention of either auditory image or verbal expression. 
Efficient silent reading is the instantaneous association of 
printed words with the ideas which the words represent. 
The earlier we develop this habit of direct association in 
children, the sooner shall we make them efficient and in- 
telligent readers. Too early drill in oral reading not only 
hinders the acquirement of this habit in early years, but 
injures the child's chance of acquiring it in later life. 

When to Begin to Teach Oral Reading 

Just how soon it is desirable to begin oral-reading drill is 
open to argument. In general it might be said that it 
should not be until the habit of direct association between 
words and their meanings has become firmly fixed. That 
would probably mean the third or fourth grade at the 
earliest. It might possibly be introduced earlier to a 
limited extent without great harm, provided care is taken 
to preserve the proper order of mental associations as ex- 
plained later. 

It is probably not advisable to drop formal drill in oral 
reading altogether, although extremists go so far as to 
advocate doing so. Something in the nature of drill in 
verbal-motor reaction to printed-word stimuli would seem 
to be necessary to the child's complete mental develop- 
ment. There must be drill in phonics and phonetics in 
order to develop in the child independence and confidence 
in attacking new words. There must be practice in word- 
pronouncing, not only for the sake of learning to pronounce 
new words, but also for the sake of building up the speak- 
ing vocabulary. This latter result is accomplished through 
developing mental associations between visual forms and 
auditory images. Nor can such practice be postponed 
beyond the age of easy and economical habit formation, 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 155 

in other words, beyond the natural period for effective 
drill. But it should not begin so early as to prevent the 
formation of other habits just as important. 

Why Silent Reading should be Taught First 

We shall now turn our attention to silent reading. Why 
is it so much more important to develop silent-reading 
ability in the child than to develop oral-reading ability, 
admitting that oral-reading ability is a valuable accom- 
plishment? And if both abilities are to be developed, why 
should silent reading come first? 

It is more important because it is the type of reading 
ability that the child needs to use in studying history, 
geography, physiology, civics, and even mathematics be- 
yond the bare fundamentals. It is almost the only kind 
of reading he will do after he gets out of school. It is 
probably no exaggeration to say that over ninety-nine per 
cent of the reading done by most adults is silent reading. 

Silent reading should come first because oral-reading 
ability and silent-reading ability are, psychologically, two 
very different accomplishments, and, while efficiency in 
silent reading is a very necessary preliminary to good oral 
reading, effective drill in oral reading is, on the other hand, 
a positive hindrance to efficient silent reading. Why, then, 
should so large a part of the pupil's school time be devoted 
to acquiring an ability of so little practical use at the ex- 
pense of failing to acquire another that is, beyond intelli- 
gent dispute, the most useful one that he can develop? 

Silent reading has already been defined as the process 
of making direct mental associations between visual 
images and ideas, between printed words and their mean- 
ings, without the intervention of auditory images or verbal 
expression. It is the reading of meanings rather than of 
words. Efficient silent reading means much more. It 



156 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

means rapid and accurate gathering of thoughts from the 
printed page. An efficient silent reader takes in whole 
thoughts at a glance and associates them instantly with 
previous experience while being scarcely conscious of the 
word-forms. He looks through the words and is conscious 
only of the ideas they express. That the rapid reader not 
only reads much more, but retains more of what he reads 
and understands it better than does the slow reader, is a 
fact so well proved that further discussion is unnecessary. 
Excellent psychological reasons are advanced to account 
for this fact. Rate and comprehension, the two chief 
factors in efficient silent reading, go hand in hand. 

Silent Reading as Actually Taught 

In progressive school systems, silent-reading practice is 
being given more and more the prominence it deserves 
in the elementary-school program. The methods and 
technique in most general use are, however, of questionable 
efficacy. Although the idea of the need of developing 
silent-reading ability early in the child's school career is 
spreading rapidly, little attention seems to have been given 
to developing rational special methods. Hence, many 
teachers have but a vague idea of how best to proceed to 
get good results. 

Within the past two years I have visited a number of 
schools where it was rumored that the teaching of silent 
reading was a specialty, with the purpose of finding out 
how it was taught. Much of the work was being done by 
normal-school seniors as part of their practice teaching. 
The information I obtained was both surprising and dis- 
couraging. Most of the work I witnessed was almost as 
reprehensibly time-wasting as slipshod oral-reading drill. 
The only idea most of the teachers seemed to have of what 
constitutes silent-reading drill was that of 'having children 
read books or selections from books or periodicals silently 



READING AIMS AND METHODS 157 

at their seats and then of having them give oral or written 
reports on what they had read. Some of them did not 
even call for reports. They merely accepted the child's 
statement that he had read over the assignment. Is that 
kind of silent reading useless? Well, no, not entirely. 
Almost any kind of reading is better than none. But as a 
means of developing habits of concentration and rapid 
comprehension I should say that it is, if not entirely useless, 
at least discouragingly slow. It is like waiting for the 
weather to wear away a granite ledge instead of attacking 
it with steam drills and blasting powder. I found the 
nearest approach to effective class drill in silent reading 
where some teachers gave their classes a definite length of 
time, say one minute or two minutes, in which to read a 
page from a story and then called on some member of the 
class to tell what he had read, while the others listened 
carefully to discover errors or omissions. 

Merely Giving Children Books to Read is not 

Sufficient 

Now, what is the matter with giving children books to 
read at their seats for silent-reading drill? In the first 
place, it is a waste of school time. It does not develop 
silent-reading ability to any great extent, and it takes time 
which can be used to better advantage. Such reading has 
its place if the material is worth while either from an in- 
formational or a literary standpoint, but it should usually 
be assigned for home work if assigned at all. It may serve 
as extra work for brighter pupils for whom the ordinary 
class assignments are not sufficient to keep their time 
profitably employed. 

In the second place, it does not demand, or at least it 
does not force, that concentration of attention so abso- 
lutely essential to a complete and accurate understanding 
of what is read. Most of us have had the experience of 



158 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

trying to read something in which we were not particularly 
interested while our thoughts tended to wander to more 
congenial subjects, or of trying to read something really 
interesting while some other matter weighed heavily on 
our minds. How many times have we read on, page after 
page, without comprehending a single thought of the 
author. The boy, dawdling and day-dreaming over a 
book at his seat with his thoughts continually wandering 
to the baseball field, is not getting much worth-while 
silent-reading practice. On the contrary, he is forming 
very bad habits. 

In the third place, such practice does not develop speed, 
that highly important factor in efficient silent reading. 
In such reading there is usually little incentive for the 
pupil to read rapidly while at the same time concentrating 
his attention on getting the thought. Rate of accompKsh- 
ment is a phase of performance that has been largely neg- 
lected in estimating the relative abilities of pupils, not 
only in reading, but in other subjects as well. For in- 
stance, ten problems are assigned to a class in arithmetic. 
Both John and James do them all correctly and each gets 
a mark of one hundred, although John does them in half 
the time that it takes James. Is such marking fair to 
John? He is in one sense twice as efficient as James in 
arithmetic and his school marks should indicate that fact. 
Similarly in reading. The pupil who can read three pages 
in five minutes and understand all that the author has 
said is three times as efficient a reader as he who can read 
but a single page with equal understanding in the same 
length of time. So unless we can find something better in 
the way of silent-reading drill than merely to give a child 
some reading to do at his seat and perhaps to require a 
written or oral report, it would be as well and probably 
better to stick to oral-reading drill for a few hundred years 
longer. 



CHAPTER XII 

SILENT READING IN THE LOWER GRADES 

Reading, then, is the most fundamental subject taught in 
the elementary grades. Ability to read is absolutely es- 
sential to progress along almost every line of school work. 
Reading is the key with which the pupil unlocks the gates 
of knowledge; the medium through which he makes the 
accumulated information of the race his own. Hence the 
importance of developing efficient readers in the lower 
grades and our decision to give reading a place in our school 
program commensurate with its importance. 

Must Develop the Kind of Ability the Tests 

Measure 

It was obvious from the results of our first reading tests 
that if we expected to bring the schools up to the test 
standards for each grade, we must guide our teaching 
efforts so as to develop the kind of reading ability that the 
tests measure. That the customary oral-reading drill 
would not develop this ability, the reading scores of the 
upper-grade pupils furnished ample proof; for these scores 
averaged much below normal despite the fact that the 
pupils had had such drill for years. Besides, even the 
standard scores for the silent-reading tests are probably 
much too low, since they are derived from the results of 
testing children who have for the most part been taught 
oral reading. 

After we had made an investigation of current practice 
in the teaching of silent reading and had studied the 
meager literature on the subject, it was equally obvious 



i6o STANDARDIZED TESTS 

that we should have to depend largely on our own in- 
ventive resources for a program and method that would 
offer hope of measurable results within a reasonable length 
of time. Accordingly, we evolved the plan which I am 
about to set forth. 

The Success of the Plan Adopted 

This program has not proved an unqualified success in 
every school or with every teacher. But in most schools 
it has proved reasonably effective, and in every school 
wherein the pupils average normal in intelligence and are 
taught by a teacher who has entered into the spirit of the 
work, it has proved effective beyond our most sanguine 
expectations. There are a few small schools in the dis- 
trict where the average mental level is too low to expect 
normal results under any method or any teacher. There 
are a few teachers who, either because of lack of teaching 
ability or unwillingness to cooperate whole-heartedly in 
the experiment, have failed to get better results. It has 
been impossible as yet to replace all of them because of the 
great shortage of teachers during the last two or three 
years. But I am convinced from the results achieved 
by our better teachers that, with a reasonably capable 
teacher, the plan will produce excellent results in every 
school where the pupils average normal mentality. At 
any rate, though by no means perfect, it has enabled us to 
bring most of our schools up to the grade standards of 
Monroe's Silent Reading Test within the year and a half 
during which it has been in operation. 

Reading in Grade I 

It vas a great step in advance when teaching the alphabet 
was discarded as the initiatory step in teaching beginners 
to read, and when the teaching of whole words, phrases, 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES i6i 

and sentences was substituted therefor. It will be another 
great step forward when the elimination of verbal-motor 
expression in primary reading work becomes general. 
The first problem confronting the teacher with a class of 
beginners is to help them acquire a visual vocabulary while 
at the same time forcing them to make direct associations 
between printed words and the ideas they represent. The 
only way this can be done is to eliminate as far as possible 
in class drills the pronunciation, either by teacher or pupils, 
of the new words being presented to the class. Whenever 
possible teachers should indicate the meanings of new 
words by other than verbal means, and the pupils should 
indicate their understanding of the meanings without 
actually pronouncing the words. Of course, it is impossi- 
ble to do away entirely with verbal forms and auditory 
images because there are many common words, such as 
articles, prepositions, conjunctions, abstract nouns, with 
their adjective and adverb derivatives, and verbs other 
than verbs of action, which cannot be introduced economi- 
cally if at all in any other way than orally. But the teacher 
can exercise considerable ingenuity in trying to teach the 
meaning of a word before having recourse to pronouncing 
it and explaining it orally. 

Now, to what words in visual form shall we first intro- 
duce the beginner in this process of vocabulary-building? 
Obviously to the words belonging to the speaking vocabu- 
lary which he has already acquired. To begin with, there 
is a large number of words which we can be sure are com- 
mon to the vocabularies of most seven-and-eight-year-olds 
who have been brought up under normal conditions in this 
country. Many other words known in general to the 
particular group can be found by drawing the pupils into 
conversation or discussion and noting the words which 
they use and which all of them seem to understand. _Not 



i62 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

until the possibilities of the children's own speaking 
vocabularies are exhausted is it necessary to turn to the 
vocabularies of books. 

Teaching the First Words 

Let us suppose that the teacher has chosen for the first 
lesson a list of ten words which she is sure corresponds to 
a part of the stock of ideas common to all the children in 
the class. The list might be as follows: hoy, girl, the, run, 
jump, sit, chair, pencil, hook, desk. How is she going to 
teach the meanings of these words without pronouncing 
them or permitting the pupils to pronounce them? To 
begin with, she should have each word printed neatly on a 
separate card about a foot long and three inches wide — 
large enough at least so that the printed word can be 
clearly seen by the entire class at one time. Such cards 
are similar to the ordinary quick-perception cards; but 
their use is quite different from the usual use of quick- 
perception cards. Generally such a card is flashed for an 
instant before the pupil's eyes. He is then supposed to 
recognize it and respond with the vocal form. This vocal 
response, however, is just what we want to avoid at first. 
The better way is for the teacher to begin with three words; 
as, hook, pencil, chair. She exposes each word in turn 
while calling the attention of the class to the object which 
it represents. Then she goes over them again asking a 
pupil to point out the objects. This process is repeated 
with different pupils until the whole class is able to recog- 
nize the words as representing particular objects. Then 
another word is included, after illustrating its meaning; 
and the drill is repeated. 

This procedure continues until all the words in the list 
are learned thoroughly. This may take one period or 
several. It is slow work at first, but it pays. Thorough- 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 1^3 

ness is essential. Run and jump, being verbs of action, 
can be easily illustrated by the teacher. The word the 
must be told outright. The pupils are familiar with its 
use and need only to become acquainted with its visual 
form. Concrete nouns and verbs of action which are 
capable of easy illustration should constitute the bulk of 
the words taught during the first term, in order to avoid 
so far as possible the necessity of pronunciation and oral 
explanation. When words must of necessity be presented 
orally, there should be no more repetition of the pronuncia- 
tion than is absolutely necessary. 

Keeping the Right Order of Association 

Not until a considerable number of words have been 
taught in this way, and the habit of forming direct associa- 
tion between printed words and ideas has been well started, 
should the vocal forms be used in class drill unless they 
cannot be avoided. Indeed, beyond what is absolutely 
essential, it is a question whether or not they should be 
used at all during the first half-year. But if it seems 
necessary to use them, great care should be taken to pre- 
serve the proper order of mental associations. Do not let 
the auditory image get between the visual image and the 
idea. The proper order, so far as reading is concerned, is: 
Visual Image, Idea, Auditory Image, Verbal-Motor Ex- 
pression; not Visual Image, Auditory Image, Verbal- 
Motor Expression, Idea. It makes a great deal of differ- 
ence, as regards the development of present silent-reading 
efficiency and future oral-reading efficiency, which order 
of associations is formed in the child's mind in the very 
beginning. 

Hence the importance of getting the direct associations 
between words and their meanings before verbal expression 
is permitted in connection with the class drill. The proper 



i64 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

order of associations can be maintained by the above- 
described process of vocabulary development preceding 
the oral naming of objects or actions. When a strange 
word is presented to a child, it means nothing to him, al- 
though he may be perfectly familiar with the object which 
it represents and the spoken word which stands for it. If 
the teacher points to the object instead of pronouncing it, 
the printed word is first associated with its meaning in the 
child's mind. Although, if the idea is familiar to the child, 
this association immediately calls up another previously 
formed association, namely, that of the idea with its 
auditory symbol, nevertheless the association of the visual 
form with the idea has been made first, and thus the proper 
order of associations has been maintained. To illustrate, 
suppose the teacher holds up a card with the word desk on 
it. The children have never seen the printed word before. 
It means nothing to them, although they know perfectly 
well what a desk is, and how to say the word. There has 
been no association formed between the printed word and 
its meaning. Let the teacher point to the word and then 
to a desk, and instantly the association is made, and fol- 
lowed instantly by the auditory image which tends toward 
verbal-motor expression unless the latter is repressed. 

But suppose the teacher pronounces the word for the 
class instead of pointing out the object which it represents. 
The children know instantly what it means because asso- 
ciation has been previously formed between the idea and 
the spoken word. But here the spoken word intervenes 
between the printed word and its meaning, thus setting up 
an order of associations which is wrong from the point of 
view of reading. This is just what happens when quick- 
perception cards are used in the ordinary way Moreover, 
when this oral method is used, children may learn through 
imitation of the teacher to recognize and pronounce new 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 165 

words without grasping their meanings. Suppose a card 
is shown with a word representing an idea wholly outside of 
the child's experience. The teacher pronounces it and the 
child pronounces it after her. In time he learns to recog- 
nize it and to pronounce it correctly when he sees it either 
on the card or in a book; but, wherever he meets it, it has 
no meaning for him. The method here suggested ensures 
that the child will get the meaning of every new word. 
If we must teach the vocal forms of words along with their 
visual forms, let us first make sure that they know their 
meanings by some assurance other than oral before they 
are asked to pronounce them. 

Teaching Sentences 

As soon as a sufiScient number of words have been learned 
by the class, the teacher should begin to make use of short 
sentences made up of the words already learned from the 
quick-perception cards. In order to avoid so far as possi- 
ble the necessity for oral reading, these sentences should 
express simple actions which children can perform in the 
schoolroom, or ideas which permit them in some other way 
than orally to express their complete understanding of the 
thought of the sentences. Below are a few examples of 
such sentences. 

1. Open the door. 

2. Show me a pencil. 

3. Go to the window. 

4. Pick up a book. 

5. Sit in the chair. 

A pupil can easily express his understanding of such 
sentences through action without speaking a word. Not 
until he has performed the act expressed by a sentence, if 
at all, should he be asked or permitted to read it orally. 



i66 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

This is real, efficient silent-reading drill which can be 
used effectively with the little ones after the first three or 
four weeks of vocabulary-building. Some people hold 
that oral reading is absolutely necessary in beginning to 
teach reading; except through oral expression, they con- 
ceive of no way of knowing whether or not a child is mak- 
ing proper progress. Our experience, however, with the 
method I am describing shows that oral reading is emphat- 
ically not necessary. Besides, one must remember that 
oral expression is no safe indication of progress in reading 
abihty, because it does not prove understanding of what is 
being read. The drill described above does prove such 
understanding. If a child, after glancing at the first sen- 
tence, walks to a door and opens it, he proves conclusively 
that he understands the sentence. 

Of course, this method of teaching reading cannot be 
expected to appeal strongly to the type of teacher whose 
chief interest is in her salary. It demands considerably 
more thought and effort on the part of the teacher than 
does the customary oral-reading drill. She cannot crochet, 
or write letters, or even put work on the board for other 
classes while using it She must plan her work ahead and 
be prepared from day to day with suitable material. She 
must go to the trouble of carefully selecting new words for 
the vocabulary-building drills and of printing them on 
cards for class use. She must devise and print large num- 
bers of action sentences for the sentence interpretation 
work. Cheap manila cardboard, commonly known as 
"tag," should be furnished her for this purpose. A chart- 
marker should also be furnished for each schoolroom; but 
if this is not available, the printing can be done by hand 
with the rubber end of an ordinary lead pencil dipped 
in black drawing ink. The chart-marker is naturally 
very much to be preferred because it has the same letter 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 167 

forms that the pupil will meet in the books he is to study 
later. 

The Use of Pictures 

To illustrate the meanings of all concrete nouns by means 
of the objects themselves is. impossible. It would be rather 
awkward to import a barn or a locomotive into the school- 
room to illustrate the meaning of a word. Obviously the 
next best thing to the object itself is a good picture of it. 
So, the real live teacher, with efficiency in view, will make 
a collection of pictures with which to illustrate ideas to her 
classes. The papers and magazines are full of suitable 
material, and a picture of almost any object under the sun 
can be found in the big catalogues of mail-order houses. 

These pictures should be pasted on small cards, and they 
should be kept neatly filed and indexed. Every school- 
room ought to have a filing cabinet for this purpose. 
After choosing the new words to be taught, the teacher 
should take from the cabinet pictures to illustrate their 
meanings if they are words whose meanings can be so 
illustrated. A word may be shown first and then a picture 
to illustrate it until all the new words have been thus ex- 
plained as to meaning. Then the pictures may be spread 
out on a table, the words flashed in turn, and the pupils 
asked to pick out the proper pictures. This drill may be 
continued until all the words are instantaneously asso- 
ciated with their meanings as shown by the readiness of the 
children in choosing the correct pictures. 

Probably there is no other device so efficient in vocabu- 
lary-building as the illustrated vocabulary. Something 
of this kind in particularly effective form for seat work is 
now sold by Milton Bradley & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 
It consists of a series of cards about 4x5 inches, each card 
bearing a picture of some object. In each lower corner of 



i68 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 



the card is printed the name of the object illustrated. The 
right-hand lower corner with one of the words on it is cut 
out. The cards and the cut-out corners are all shuffled 
together and it is the pupil's task to match the words on 




Fig. 13 



the cut-off corners with the words and pictures on the 
cards, putting the corners in the places from which they 
were cut so as to form complete cards. The accompanying 
figure will make plain the idea. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 169 

This plan is excellent, but the range of words so far il- 
lustrated is much too limited. If the range could be ex- 
tended to include five or six hundred of the common words 
capable of pictorial explanation, it would be a wonderful 
help in the teaching of silent reading in the lower grades. 

If I remember correctly, the scheme is self-correcting. 
If not, it could easily be made so by varying the shape of 
the cut-out so that it would fit only the card from which it 
was cut. With this self-correcting feature there would be 
no need of a printed word on the main card; and I am not 
sure but that it would be better to omit it. If it is not 
omitted, it may well be that pupils will fit the corners by 
matching words without having their attention particu- 
larly attracted to the picture which illustrates the meaning 
of the word. In fact, with the word printed on the main 
card with the picture, there is no very strong incentive for 
fitting the corners at all. With this word omitted, the 
game would be to fit the corner in order to find out by the 
picture what the word on the cut-out means. 

Reading from Books — Little good Material 

Available 

The drills in vocabulary-building and sentence-interpreta- 
tion described above should be continued throughout the 
first half-year, or until the children have acquired sufficient 
vocabulary and reading ability to read a simple, short, 
connected story from a book and then to tell the story in 
their own words. Then it is time to begin reading from 
books. And right here is where we meet with the first 
real difficulty in teaching silent reading to beginners. The 
difficulty exists simply because the reading material in 
primers and first readers is mostly unsuited to class drill 
in silent reading. Here, for instance, is a selection from a 
certain first reader. 



170 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

" Mary is making a pancake. 
It is fun to mix a pancake. 
It is fun to stir a pancake. 
Pop it in the pan! 
See Mary make a pancake. 
See the pancake in the pan. 
It is fun to stir a pancake. 
It is fun to pop it in the pan." 

Imagine asking a little child to read this silently and 
then tell the " story " in his own words! There simply 
is n't any story to it. Here is another gem from near the 
end of the same book: 

**This is a rainy day. 
I cannot go out to play in the rain. 
I see the organ man, Susan. 
The organ man is playing in the rain. 
Here is a penny, Susan. 
The organ man will play for a penny. 
Run to the door and give the organ man this penny.'* 

This IS not much better. The rhymes are even worse for 
silent reading purposes. Yet these are representative 
samples of the incoherent contents of most modern first 
readers. The primers are even greater conglomerations of 
unrelated nonsense. Some of the material may be worth 
while as hterature, interesting to little children, and per- 
fectly adapted to oral-reading drill. But it is n't oral- 
reading ability that we want to develop at this stage. We 
want to develop silent-reading ability, and for this purpose 
such material is not at all suitable. In fact there seems to 
be little material simple enough to be available for first- 
grade use that is also suitable for silent-reading class drill 
in that grade. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 171 

An Example of Usable Material 

I HAVE just finished examining seven primers and ten first 
readers in an attempt to find some pieces with which to 
illustrate silent-reading class drill for little folks. In but 
one first reader did I find a few simple stories coherent 
enough to make sensible reading, and they are largely- 
spoiled for my purpose by containing too much direct dis- 
course. For direct discourse, which is so eminently suited 
to oral reading, is about the poorest sort of material for 
silent-reading class drill. Here is a part of one of the 
stories, with much of the direct discourse left out or 
changed to narrative: 

RED HEN AND THE FOX 
I 

Red Hen lived in a little red house. 

Near the house lived Sly Fox. 

His mother lived with him. 

One day Mother Fox said, "I want a hen to eat." 

II 

"Very well, mother," said Sly Fox, "I will get one for you." 
He told his mother to get a pot of hot water ready. 
Then Sly Fox took a bag and went to Red Hen's house. 

Ill 

Red Hen was in the garden. 

She saw Sly Fox. 

Red Hen flew up on her little house. 

She thought she would be safe there. 

A fox cannot fly. 

IV 
When Sly Fox saw Red Hen on the house, he said, 

"I'll get her now." 
So he ran round and round and round the house. 
It made Red Hen so dizzy that she fell off the house. 
Sly Fox put her in his bag and away he ran. 



172 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

One Way of Using Such Material 

Now, we vary the class drill on such reading material in 
three ways. One way is to give the whole class a definite 
length of time to read a certain amount of material and 
then to have one of the pupils tell in his own words what 
he has just read. Meanwhile the rest listen with books 
closed and watch for errors or omissions. These they are 
permitted to supply, after the reciting pupil has told all he 
can remember. To illustrate, let us suppose the teacher is 
going to give the class a minute in which to read section i of 
the above story. Everybody keeps his book closed, with 
a finger marking the place, until the teacher gives the word 
to begin. At the end of a minute, she says " Stop," and 
the books are instantly closed. John, called upon to 
recite, reproduces the following ideas from the story: 

*'Red Hen lived in a little house. A fox and his mother 
lived in another house near by. One day his mother said, 
*I want a hen.'" 

When he has finished, the teacher calls for volunteers to 
supply omitted facts or to correct errors of statement. 
In this way the following omissions and corrections may 
be noted: 

1. The kind of a little house in which Red Hen lived. 

2. The name of the fox. 

3. Why the mother fox wanted a hen. 

4. The story does not say that the foxes lived in a house. 
John's statement to the effect that they lived in a house 
shows that he did not fully understand what he read 
and is evidence of somewhat careless reading. 

There are at least two advantages of this method of 
class drill in silent reading: 

(i) Everybody is working all the time. Each pupil reads 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 173 

(a) with concentration because he may be the one called 
upon to recite, and (b) rapidly because his time is limited. 
Concentration of attention is conducive to accurate com- 
prehension, and speed and accuracy of comprehension are 
the two chief factors in efHcient silent reading. (2) The 
pupil reciting gets practice in thinking on his feet and in 
expressing his thoughts orally, thus affording most of the 
benefits of oral reading with few of its defects. 

A possible defect of the plan is that a good verbal 
memory may simulate real comprehension in reproducing 
what has been read. However, I believe psychologists 
concede that ability to summarize in their proper relations 
the main facts of a story or other selection in one's own 
words is a fair indication that the subject-matter is under- 
stood. But the pupil who tries to keep too closely to the 
words and expressions of the book in his oral reproductions 
can be justly suspected of lack of understanding. 

The time limit and the amount of material assigned for 
each reading should vary with the average ability of the 
class and the type of matter to be read. The length of time 
should be so adjusted to the amount of material that the 
majority of the children will be forced to read at top speed 
in order to cover the assignment within the period. Com- 
prehension will suffer at first, but in no other way can 
normal speed be developed within a reasonable length of 
time. Under such conditions pupils who have already 
formed bad habits of lip-movement or of spelling out 
words will be forced to abandon them in order to keep up 
with the others. 

The time allowed for reading an assignment should not 
be so long as to prevent a considerable number of children 
from having an opportunity to recite during each class 
period. If the time for each assignment is three minutes 
and the reading period fifteen minutes, not more than three 



174 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

or four pupils can recite during a period. On the other 
hand, if the time limit is one minute, eight or nine children 
will get a chance to recite. A time limit of from half a 
minute to a minute for all grades, the amount of material 
to be read being adjusted accordingly, will produce excel- 
lent results as the records of our schools prove. 

The assignment should not be so long as to preclude the 
possibility of fairly complete reproduction of details from 
memory; nor should it be so short as to make possible the 
verbatim memorization of the words of the book in the 
time allowed for the reading. 

A Second Method 

A SECOND way of treating the same material is for the 
teacher to prepare beforehand a list of questions based or 
the text to be read. After the pupils have read a section, 
timed as before, she may test their comprehension of the 
thought by asking the question the answers to which are 
given or suggested in the section read. Let me repeat here 
the four sections of our selection with appropriate ques- 
tions on each. 

RED HEN AND THE FOX 



Red Hen lived in a little red house. Near the house lived 
Sly Fox. His mother lived with him. One day Mother Fox 
said, " I want a hen to eat." 

1. In what kind of a little house did Red Hen live? 

2. Who lived near them? 

3. Who lived with Sly Fox? 

4. What did Mother Fox say she wanted? 

5. What did she want it for? 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 175 

II 

"Very well, mother," said Sly Fox, "I will get one for you." 
So Sly Fox told his mother to get ready a pot of hot water. 
Then he took a bag and went to Red Hen's house. 

1. What did Sly Fox tell his mother he would do? 

2. What did he tell his mother to do? 

3. Then where did he go? 

4. What did he take with him? 

■ 5. What do you suppose the pot of hot water was for? 
6. What do you suppose the bag was for? 

Ill 

Red Hen was in her garden. She saw Sly Fox. Red Hen 
flew up on her little house. She thought she would be safe 
there. A fox cannot fly. 

1. Where was Red Hen? 

2. What did she do when she saw the fox? 

3. Why did she do it? 

4. Why did she think she would be safe there? 

IV 

When Sly Fox saw Red Hen on the house, he said, "I'll 
get you now." So he ran round and round and round the 
house. It made Red Hen so dizzy that she fell off the house. 
Sly Fox put her into his bag and away he ran. 

1. What did Sly Fox say when he saw Red Hen on the 
house? 

2. What did he do? 

3. What happened to Red Hen? 

4. What did Sly Fox do with her? 

A Third Metfiod 

According to a third variation in method, the teacher may 
prepare questions as just shown, but, instead of having the 
class read a section beforehand and then asking the pupils 
to answer the questions from memory, she may ask the 



176 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

questions one at a time and let them read to find the 
answers. The game is to see who can find the answer first. 
This practice has some advantages over the others in that 
it (a) ensures better concentration, and (b) soon develops 
the ability to scan quickly a paragraph or a page in search 
of a definite idea while ignoring unessential details. Such 
ability is very useful later in studying lessons from topical 
outlines. It is really a treat to see the little tots concen- 
trating on their work, each one trembling with eagerness 
to be the first to discover the right idea. 

Second Readers Begin in the Last Half of the 

First Year 

Now let us return for a moment to the before-mentioned 
lack of suitable book material for silent-reading class drill 
in the first grade. Little of such material is found in 
present-day primers and first readers. All these books 
were designed for oral-reading drill. Not until we come 
to the second readers do we find any considerable amount 
of material of a usable nature and here the vocabulary 
requirements are rather heavy. Nevertheless, we have 
been obliged to use them during the last part of the first 
year because they are, for the most part, the only suitable 
books available. Their use has been possible only because 
the vocabulary-building and sentence-interpretation drill 
above described really develop reading ability with sur- 
prising rapidity when properly handled. By the end of 
the first half-year of such drill, most of the first-year pupils 
in the schools where the plan has been intelHgently carried 
out can do very well at reading simple stories at sight. 

By continuing these drills, using the new words in the 
reading books for vocabulary-building, the action sentences 
made up from these words for sentence-interpretation, we 
were able to begin with second readers soon after the 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 177 

middle of the first year in the schools that had been undei 
capable instruction. And these schools were not taught 
by highly trained and broadly experienced teachers. The 
good results were accomplished through interest, industry, 
and common sense. Of course, all the new words in each 
story had to be thoroughly taught before the story could 
be used for silent-reading drill. 

The Result in One School 

The results in some schools are astonishingly good. I 
visited one school just recently and witnessed a silent- 
reading drill that almost took my breath away. A second 
grade, of nine pupils, none of them more than eight and a 
half years old, was reading a simplified version of Robinson 
Crusoe by the timed-section method described above. 
The text was of a degree of difficulty usually assigned to 
the fourth or fifth grade. The teacher informed me that 
they had just finished reading some stories from the 
Arabian Nights a few days before. These pupils were 
reading a full page of the text in half a minute and then 
getting up and telling what they had read, scarcely omitting 
a detail of any importance. They not only told it, but 
they told it smoothly in their own words with good ex- 
pression and using good English. They could certainly 
talk on their feet without hesitation or embarrassment. 
Nor was this a spectacular exhibition by very bright 
pupils. I looked up their mental test records on the spot. 
While it is true that there was none with an intelligence 
quotient below 90, there were only two with intelligence 
quotients above no. These two had intelligence quotients 
of 116 and 119 respectively. The class was just an aver- 
age group of children who had been under the right kind of 
reading instruction from the first. They were shining 
examples of what is possible in the way of teaching reading. 



178 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

The Kind of Material Needed for First-Grade Use 

To begin with, it would be a great help to have some books 
to replace the ordinary primers and first readers — books 
containing the usual children's classics written in pure 
narrative form without direct discourse. To illustrate, I 
will reproduce here a story as it is found in a popular first 
reader, and then give the same story in rewritten form 
suitable for silent-reading drill, or at least as nearly suit- 
able as purely literary narrative can be. 



• THE THREE LITTLE PIGS 

Once there was a mother pig. 

The mother pig had three little pigs. 

There was little pig One. 

There was little pig Two. 

There was little pig Three. 

One day the mother pig said, 

*' Go, find some work, little pigs." 

The little pigs went to find work. 

Little pig One said, "I shall build me a house." 
Little pig Two said, '*I shall build me a house." 
Little pig Three said, "I shall build me a house." 

Little pig One said, 

**I shall build a soft house." 

Little pig Two said, 

"I shall build a tall house." 

Little pig Three said, 

*'I shall build a strong house." 

One day little pig One found some straw. 
The straw was soft, 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 179 

Little pig One said, 

"This straw will make my house soft. 

I will build a straw house." 

Then little pig One built a house of the soft straw. 

One day a wolf came to the straw house. 
The wolf knocked at the door. 
The little pig ran to the door. 
The wolf said: 

"Little pig, little pig, 
Let me come in." 

**No, no, by the hair 
Of my chinny-chin-chin." 

"Then I'll huff and I'll puff 
And I'll blow your house in." 

Then the wolf huffed and puffed and blew in the straw house 
and ate up the little pig. 

Little pig Two found some sticks. 

Little pig Two said, 

" The sticks will not make a strong house. 

The sticks will make a tall house. 

I will build my house of sticks." 

Then little pig Two built a tall house of sticks. 

One day the woK came to the house of sticks. 
The wolf knocked at the door and said, 
"Little pig, Httle pig," etc. 

So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew in the house of sticks 
and ate up little pig Two. 

Little pig Three found some stone. 
Little pig Three said, 
"This stone will make a strong house; 
I will build my house of stone." 



i8o STANDARDIZED TESTS 

The little pig worked one day. . 

He worked two days. 

He worked three days. 

Then the house of stone was built. 

The wolf came to the stone house. 
He knocked at the door. 
Wolf. Little pig, little pig, 
Let me come in. 

Pig. No, no, by the hair 

Of my chinny-chin-chin. , 

WOLP. Then I'U huff and I 'U puff 
And I '11 blow your house in. 

Pig. You may h uff and puff, but you will not 
blow my house in. 

The wolf huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed, but he 
did not blow in the strong house of stone. 

The same story in the following form, with much of the 
direct discourse and with all needless and monotonous 
repetition omitted, is much more suitable for silent reading 
class drill. 

THE THREE LITTLE PIGS 

I 

Once there was a mother pig with three little pigs. The 
pigs were named One, Two, and Three. One day the mother 
pig told them to go find some work. So the little pigs went to 
find work. 

n 

Each little pig said he would build himself a house. 
Little pig One said he would build himself a soft house. 
Little pig Two said he would build himself a tall house. 
Little pig Three said he would build himself a strong house. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES i8i 

III 

One day little pig One found some straw. The straw was 
soft. It would make a soft house. So little pig One built a 
house of the soft straw. 

IV 

One day a wolf came to the straw house. The wolf knocked 
at the door. The little pig ran to the door. The wolf said: 
"Little pig, Httle pig, let me come in." 
"No, no, by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin." 
"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." 
Then the wolf huffed and puffed and blew in the straw house 
and ate up the Httle pig. 

V 

Little pig Two found some sticks. Sticks will not make 
a strong house. They will make a tall house. So Httle pig 
Two built a tall house of sticks. 

VI 

One day the wolf came to the house of sticks. He knocked at 
the door and said: 

"Little pig, Httle pig," etc. 

So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew in the house of sticks 
and ate up Httle pig Two. 

VII 

Little pig Three found some stones. Stones will not make a 
soft house but they will make a strong one. So little pig Three 
built his house of stones. He worked three days and then 
the house of stone was built. 

vin 

The wolf came to the stone house. He knocked at the door. 

"Little pig, little pig," etc. 
The wolf huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed but he did 
not blow in the strong house of stone. 



1 82 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

If such stories could be printed with four or five good 
questions immediately following each section, so much the 
better. The teacher would then be furnished with test 
questions which she might not have the ambition to pre- 
pare beforehand for herself. If the teacher makes up her 
questions in class, much time is usually wasted and the 
questions are not well chosen. All new words in each story 
should be printed at the beginning of the story. 

Do not fear for an instant that the use of such meta- 
morphosed (desiccated, if you will) stories of childhood 
will result in less interest and enthusiasm on the part of 
pupils. What is lost in the material is made up in the 
method. I have never seen anywhere else such spon- 
taneous enthusiasm as is evidenced by our silent-reading 
classes, providing the drill is properly handled and the 
teacher herself shows some life and interest. And without 
an interested and enthusiastic teacher, neither material 
nor method of any sort will arouse any great enthusiasm 
in class drill. Several times have pupils complained to me 
that their teachers were not carrying on the reading drill as 
I had directed and demonstrated in the presence of the 
children. They asked me to try to have her do so, because 
they thought the work, as I presented it, was so much more 
interesting. These complainants were, not first-grade 
pupils, of course. 

Still better would be some books based on historical and 
geographical facts and written as pure exposition. Ex- 
pository material is best suited to silent-reading drill. 
Only very elementary facts should be so treated, and that 
in the simplest possible language. With the use of such 
books the intensive study inherent in properly conducted 
silent-reading drill would make the reading period doubly 
valuable because the children would be acquiring worth- 
while information while, at the same time, developing 
reading ability. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 183 

But even better types of silent-reading exercises are 
possible, especially for the transition from the quick-per- 
ception word and sentence drills to book material. Books 
filled largely with the type of exercises used in Haggerty's 
" reading test " for primary grades would be excellent to 
replace the ordinary primer for silent-reading purposes. 
Some of this material is reproduced below. ^ 



Put a stem on the apple. 




Put a cross on the ball. 6^^ 


Put a ring around the bee. 



^•^^,^r 





Make two lines under the horse. 
Put a cross over the dog. 

Fig. 14 

* From Haggeriy Reading Examination: Sigma I. Cop3night, 1921, by World 
Book Compaay, Yookers-on-Hudsou, N.Y. 



i84 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Such exercises as these could be varied with action 
sentences hl^e those heretofore suggested, the child proving 
his understanding of the sentences by carrying out the 
actions therein described. Such action sentences should 
gradually increase in length and difficulty throughout the 
book 

Questions like the following also make good elementary 
silent-reading exercises. Here the child reads the question 
silently and gives his answer orally: 

1. Can a chair walk? 

2. Is four more than two? 

3. Have all girls the same name? 

4. Are men larger than boys? 

5. Does flour come from milk? 

6. Is every man a soldier? 

7. Does the sun rise in the evening? 

Other good material would be pictures accompanied by 
descriptions or little stories in which many of the state- 
ments do not agree with the pictured facts. My meaning 
is illustrated below. ^ 

One day when Betty and Harry were playing barefooted in 
the fields with their dog and kittens, they found a mother bird 
teaching her little ones to fly. This picture shows the cliildren 
and the kittens watching the birds. The four little birds are 
sitting in a row on the fence while the frightened mother bird 
flutters about below them. Both children are very still so as 
not to frighten the birds. Harry has a hoop in his left hand. 
His right hand is out of sight. Betty's hat is lying on the 
ground by her feet. In front of the kittens are two tall lilies. 
How many blossoms have the lilies? How many buds have 
they? What is the dog doing? 

1 The illustration is from the Primer, in the series of Riverside Readers 
(Houghton Mifflin Company). In the original the picture is in two colors. As 
reproduced here it is reduced one-fourth in size. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 185 




Fig. 15 



The pupils read the description or story, compare its 
statements with the facts of the picture, and point out 
errors. Of course the misstatements cannot be indicated 
by the pupils unless they understand the printed thoughts. 



i86 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

These are only a few suggestions of the possibilities for 
effective devices to further the efficiency of silent-reading 
drill in the first grade. 

Reading in the Second Grade 

During the year in which our new reading program was 
initiated, we were confronted with almost as many diffi- 
culties in teaching silent reading in the second grade as we 
encountered in the first grade. True, the children aver- 
aged about a year older and could read a little orally. 
That is, they had learned to recognize a considerable 
number of printed words and to pronounce them correctly. 
But in silent-reading work they were almost as helpless as 
the beginners. In some respects they were even worse off 
than the beginners. They had already formed many bad 
reading habits. Lip-movement was universal when they 
were asked to read silently. Most of them had been 
taught the alphabet as the first step in learning to read, 
and their first reading drills were like this, each pupil in 
turn standing at the teacher's knee while she pointed out 
the words for him one at a time. 

S-e-e, see; t-h-e, the; c-a-t, cat. 

H-e, he; i-s, is; a; g-o-o-d, good; c-a-t, cat. 

S-e-e, see; t-h-e, the; g-o-o-d, good; c-a-t, cat; r-u-n, run. 

As a consequence these pupils had formed the habit of 
spelling each word before they could pronounce it. It was 
a painful sight to watch them trying to read to themselves 
at their seats, spelling out each word letter by letter and 
then pronouncing them in audible whispers as they pro- 
gressed with the end of their forefinger slowly through the 
short, simple sentences in a first reader. The teaching of 
whole words and sentences by quick-perception methods, 
so far as I could ascertain, had been entirely unknown in 
the schools of the district.. 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 187 

These bad reading habits, formed through improper 
instruction and drill without due regard to the correct 
order of associations which I have mentioned, more than 
offset what little oral-reading ability the children had ac- 
quired their first year in school. Such habits had to be 
broken up before correct ones could be formed. Therefore 
we were obliged to use practically the same methods and 
materials in the second grade as in the first grade during 
the first year of silent-reading work. 

But the next year, with second grades made up mostly 
of pupils who had been under proper reading instruction 
from the first, the problem was much simplified. There 
were few normal pupils who were unable to read rapidly 
and with comprehension material of the grade of difficulty 
found in ordinary second readers. Accordingly, there 
was no lack of reading matter for the work in this grade. 
Second and third readers were used as the chief sources of 
material, the latter during the last half of the year. Eight 
to ten books were read in class during the year by the same 
methods outlined for the first grade. All class reading 
was done at sight. Pupils were not permitted to have 
their class reading books at their seats. Vocabulary- 
building and sentence-interpretation drills were carried 
on throughout the year in much the same manner as de- 
scribed for the first grade. All new words in each story 
were thus thoroughly drilled upon before the story itself 
was attempted. 

Pronunciation of new words was still repressed during 
the greater part of the year. But with the opening of the 
spring term oral-reading practice was begun because of the 
insistent demands of the teachers who feared that the 
children would never learn to read orally if they were con- 
fined too long and too exclusively to the silent-reading 
drill. The oral reading was begun in primers. Much to 



1 88 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

the surprise of some of the teachers, most of the pupils 
could read very well indeed and could pronounce nearly 
every word correctly. In fact, the primer material proved 
so easy for them that they were given first readers after a 
few days, and it was found that they could read nearly 
as well from them as from the primers. By the middle of 
the term they were doing good work in second readers. 
Throughout the spring term from a third to a half of the 
reading time was devoted to practice in oral reading. By 
the end of the year the majority of the second-grade pupils 
could read fluently from the easier third readers. In the 
June tests more than fifty per cent of them tested third 
grade or better in silent-reading abiHty; and at the same 
time they could read orally m_ore smoothly and with better 
expression than could many in the fourth and fifth grades. 
The most surprising thing about this sudden introduc- 
tion to oral reading was the ability of the pupils to pro- 
nounce most of the words correctly, although, for the most 
part, they had been rigidly restrained from pronouncing 
them while they were being learned in class. Yet there 
was really nothing to be wondered at. Even to beginners 
most of the words contained in the lower-grade readers are 
familiar in their vocal forms and usually also in their 
meanings. The pupils had had nearly two years of inten- 
sive drill in the direct association of words with their mean- 
ings, so that when they saw a printed word it was instantly 
associated with its meaning and the next instant with its 
vocal form with which they were already familiar before 
they ever tried to read. Most of the hesitation and 
stumbling by the pupil in oral reading is due to the fact 
that he does not know the meanings of the " hard " words 
and is trying to recall imperfectly formed associations be- 
tween meaningless visual forms and their respective vocal 
forms. For instance, a child comes to the word " stove " 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 189 

in his reading. He does not connect it in his mind with any 
vocal form or with any familiar object. In other words, 
the word has no meaning for him. He hesitates, stumbles 
over it, and guesses at it. Then the teacher pronounces it 
for him and he reads on. The next day the teacher pro- 
nounces it for him again. After several such pronuncia- 
tions by the teacher, he may make permanent association 
between the printed and spoken forms of the word. 

Now, if the first time the word was met with, the teacher 
had pointed out a stove or shown the child a picture of one, 
he could instantly have pronounced the word without the 
slightest trouble. It was not the pronunciation of the 
word that needed to be taught, but its meaning as asso- 
ciated with its visual form. Hence these second-grade 
children, with very little or no previous practice in oral 
reading, could read well orally because they had learned to 
associate the printed words directly with the ideas which 
they represent. The spoken names of the ideas had been 
already acquired when they learned to talk, so that the 
vocal forms came spontaneously as fast as they recognized 
the meaning of the printed words. With such a founda- 
tion of vocabulary knowledge to build upon, oral-reading 
ability developed very rapidly with practice. 

And since, with children so trained, understanding 
precedes oral expression, they put intelligent expression 
into their reading almost as naturally as they do into their 
speaking. There was absolutely no doubt but that at the 
end of the year they were able to read orally as well as or 
better than most second-grade pupils. Their silent-read- 
ing ability has already been noted. So there seems to have 
been nothing lost and much gained by postponing oral 
reading until the latter part of the second year. It is quite 
probable that nothing would have been lost if oral read- 
ing had been postponed until the last half of the third year. 



190 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

At any rate, the fears of the teachers that the children 
would not learn to read orally having been mostly allayed 
by this experience, our next class will not begin oral reading 
until the third year. 

Considerable unsupervised silent reading was done at 
the seats during the second year. The children fairly rev- 
eled in the stories and pictures in the primers and first 
readers which by this time most of them could read with 
ease. They read them over and over at their seats. 
Nearly every day some of them were permitted to tell to 
teacher and classmates some story thus read. The ten to 
twelve new sets of primers and first readers in each school 
furnished ample material for seat work in silent reading. 

Although of necessity the literary contents of second and 
third readers furnished most of the drill material in this 
grade, nevertheless, we were not wholly confined to them. 
Some informational matter was simple enough to be avail- 
able. For instance, toward the end of the year it was 
found possible to utilize to good advantage the James Otis 
Colonial Series of historical readers in some of the schools. 
Among the titles of this series are Mary of Plymouth and 
Ruth of Boston. In these books colonial fife is pictured as 
the background for imaginary biographies of typical boys 
and girls of the colonial period. Carpenter's Around the 
World with the Children is another book with real content 
value that is simple enough for use in this grade. Most of 
the material available for second grade is, however, of the 
purely literary type which, as has been said, is least suit- 
able and least valuable for silent-reading class drill. The 
lack of simple, accurate informational reading matter is 
felt almost as strongly in the second grade as in the first. 

Reading in the Third Grade 

With the beginning of the third year, our difficulties in the 
way of teaching silent reading rapidly diminish. With 



SILENT READING IN LOWER GRADES 191 

independent reading ability already acquired through two 
years of intensive silent-reading drill and vocabulary- 
building, it is mostly a matter of more practice and more 
vocabulary-building with the advantage of a much wider 
range of reading material which can be adapted to class 
drill by the wide-awake and industrious teacher. 

The same sort of vocabulary-building drill through the 
use of quick-perception cards, with the meanings of new 
words explained by means of objects, pictures, or illustra- 
tive actions, should be continued through at least a part of 
this year. The many new words found in the supple- 
mentary reading books available for this grade, especially 
those of informational content, offer ample material for 
vocabulary-building. There are a great many words used 
in historical, geographical, and nature readers that are not 
usually found in the literary readers. If the more common 
of these words are made a permanent part of the child's 
reading vocabulary at this time, he will be that much 
better equipped to do good work in history and geography 
later on. A large part of the difficulty experienced by 
pupils in learning their lessons in the content subjects is 
due to the fact that they do not know the meanings of 
words. In fact poor reading and ineffective study is 
largely due to lack of word knowledge on the part of the 
reader. Hence my insistence on a type of vocabulary- 
building drill that will give the child as early as possible a 
large stock of words properly and permanently associated 
with their respective meanings. 

There are a large number of books now on the market 
which treat of historical and geographical facts in an inter- 
esting manner and which are not too difficult for third- 
year classes. More are appearing every year in response 
to the rapidly increasing demands for supplementary read- 
ing of this nature. 



192 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Oral reading is not neglected in the third grade, but it is 
mostly intensive rather than extensive. Its chief purpose 
is conceived to be the development of habits of clear enun- 
ciation and articulation. I would rather have a pupil read 
one paragraph well with every word pronounced clearly 
and distinctly than to have him read a whole story care- 
lessly, slurring and clipping his words. We must remember 
that " oral reading " is really practice in speaking and that, 
unless oral-reading drill leads (or drives) the pupil to form 
good habits of speech, it is time largely wasted. 

I know full well that throughout this discussion I have 
been flying in the face of well-established customs and 
traditions pertaining to reading aims and reading methods 
and in the face of some quite recently accepted conclusions 
in regard to the teaching of reading. But this is not an 
exposition of theory, so much as it is a narration of actual 
experience. Changes of method in the teaching of reading 
were suggested and shown to be necessary by the results of 
the first silent-reading tests. The changes made and 
herein described are based mainly on two things: (i) The 
aim to develop efficient readers in the shortest possible 
time, and (2) the generally accepted psychological princi- 
ples of association and memory set forth in this and pre- 
ceding chapters. 

We have found our methods good. We have proved, to 
our own satisfaction at least, that they will produce results 
in actual practice. We are doing what we set out to do, 
that is, we are developing in three or four years reading 
ability as good as or better than the abifity ordinarily de- 
veloped in the same schools in B.ve or six years. We may, 
of course, be losing some things of value which are derived 
from other methods; but we are at least getting as a rec- 
ompense real reading efficiency in most of our schools. 



CHAPTER XIII 

READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 

Reading as a Separate Subject should not be 
Necessary in the Upper Grades 

During the first year of the new regime upper-grade read- 
ing presented some problems all its own. It should not 
have been necessary to teach reading as a separate subject 
above the third grade; and probably it would not have 
been necessary, if during the first three years the children 
had been given efi&cient instruction and drill. In general 
it may be said that if, by the end of the third year, the 
mechanics of reading have been acquired to the extent that 
they may be, all that the pupil ought to need thereafter is 
continuous practice on material of increasing difficulty; 
and that practice can be arranged for {a) in connection 
with other subjects and {b) by much assigned silent-reading 
work to be done at seat or at home. Extensive silent 
reading done at home or at seat will undoubtedly help to 
improve reading ability through practice. This procedure, 
however, is far too slow and unreliable. Intensive drill in 
silent reading should undoubtedly continue throughout the 
grades. If such drill is not given in connection with other 
subjects, then it should surely be given a place of its own 
in the program. The fact that efficient reading practice 
can be given in connection with other subjects is no guar- 
antee that it will be so given unless definite arrangements 
are made for it. It has been my experience that any line 
of work not specifically provided for in the daily schedule, 
with a time allotment of its own, is pretty sure to be neg- 
lected unless it happens to be a hobby of the teacher. 



194 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Local Conditions Required Vigorous Action 

At any rate, in our situation if existing conditions were to 
be remedied to any appreciable extent by the end of the 
year, it was necessary to provide for much systematic and 
intensive drill in reading for the upper grades. Pupils old 
enough for the third and fourth grade were unable to read 
as well as beginning-second-grade pupils ought to be able 
to read. More than half the pupils in the other grades 
were from two to four grades below normal. Strong reme- 
dial measures were therefore essential if the schools were 
to be brought up to the test standards within a reasonable 
length of time. 

The Plan 

Accordingly, it was decided to have special reading 
classes for the upper grades. For this purpose the upper- 
grade pupils in each school were divided into two groups. 
In general the pupils of the fourth and fifth grades formed 
one group and those of the sixth, seventh, and eighth 
grades made up the other. In some schools it was found 
necessary to include the sixth grade in the lower group. 
In most schools the best readers of the fifth grade worked 
with the higher group, while the poorest readers of the 
higher grades worked with the lower group. In this way 
two groups of fairly uniform reading ability were secured, 
so that separate reading classes for each grade were un- 
necessary. Then, partly by cutting down the dispro- 
portionately large amount of time customarily devoted 
to arithmetic and partly by utiKzing to a large extent 
the subject-matter and supplementary reading of other 
subjects for our silent-reading material, we managed to 
squeeze out of our congested eight-grade, one-teacher 
program., two fifteen-minute reading periods per day for 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 195 

each of these groups. This is of course double the amount 
of time that ordinarily need be devoted to special reading 
drill in these grades. 

And this was not all. Much of the class work in geog- 
raphy and history was so conducted as to furnish the best 
kind of silent-reading drill, so that all told the upper grades 
had from forty-five minutes to an hour of intensive reading 
drill nearly every day. In our case the importance of the 
subject and the existing low level of efficiency demanded 
that strenuous measures be taken. 

That these measures were effective is proved by the fact 
that at the end of the same year nearly ninety per cent of 
all mentally normal pupils had attained to grade standards. 
Most of those who were not up to standard in the June 
tests were pupils in the three or four schools where the plan 
was not efficiently carried out because of lack of interest 
or adaptability on the part of the teachers. 

After considerable experimenting our special reading 
schedule for the upper grades evolved into something like 
this: 

SILENT-READING SCHEDULE FOR UPPER GRADES 







Mon. 


Tues. 


Wed. 


Thurs. 


Grades 
4&S 


A.M. 
P.M. 


History 
Literature 


Phys.&Hyg. 
Geog. 


Geog. 
History 


Civics 
Literature 


Grades 
6,7&8 


A.M. 
P.M. 


History 
Literature 


Phys.&Hyg. 
Geog. 


Geog. 
Civics 


Civics 
History 



Fri. 



Manners and 
Conduct 



Current 
Events 



Manners and 
Conduct 

Current 
Events 



196 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Chaeacter of the Reading Material 

The types of reading material used in carrying out this 
schedule were principally as follows : 

History. In the upper grades, besides regular American 
history texts, we used books like Tappan's Our European 
Ancestors, England'' s Story, Story of the Greek People, Story 
of the Roma7i People, Guerber's Story of the Chosen People, 
Coe's Makers of the Nation, etc. For silent-reading mate- 
rial in history for the fourth and fifth grades we used vari- 
ous books of American and Old- World hero stories, myths, 
and fables. No other class work in history was done in 
these grades. 

In all grades the customary question-and-answer recita- 
tion was entirely replaced by this silent-reading work re- 
viewed by fortnightly oral or written tests on the subject- 
matter covered during the preceding two weeks. The 
time usually devoted to seat study of history was given 
over to reading other of the many books of myths and hero 
tales, stories of pioneer and colonial life, and Indian 
legends recommended for supplementary reading in his- 
tory, especially in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. 

Geography. The geographical reading material con- 
sisted for the most part of one of the several excellent 
series of geographical supplementary readers now pub- 
lished. The very complete lists of well-chosen review 
questions given in some of these books make them particu- 
larly well adapted to the type of silent-reading drill wherein 
the teacher asks questions while the children read to find 
the answers. This method was described in chapter xii. 

Physiology and Hygiene. Books of the Woods Hutch- 
inson Health Series and Ritchie's Primers of Physiology, 
Hygiene, and Sanitation, were used. Silent-reading drill 
from these books together with occasional discussion and 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 197 

periodical tests by way of review, comprised all the book 
work given in physiology and hygiene. A part of the work 
was seat work, the children being assigned a topic with 
a list of questions to cover it and being required to find 
and write the answers to the questions. 

Civics. Modern texts emphasizing community civics 
were used for silent-reading class drill and supplemented 
by discussions of local community problems. This cov- 
ered all the work required in the line of civics. 

Literature. Reading material for these periods was taken 
from whatever suitable books were available in the differ- 
ent schools. The reading was done orally with particular 
attention to securing as far as possible a real audience 
situation for the reader. The book in the hands of the 
reader was the only one used in the class. The rest of the 
class, with the teacher, made up the audience. 

According to this method the pupil who does the reading 
stands in front of, and facing, the class; and after reading 
about a page he takes his seat. Then the teacher calls 
upon some member of the class to tell in his own words the 
part of the story just read. Then another pupil is called 
upon to go on with the reading. Since neither teacher nor 
classmates have any books to look at and must therefore 
depend entirely on the reader for the author's thoughts, 
the reader has every incentive to do his best. The device 
of calling upon another pupil to reproduce what has been 
read tests that pupil's understanding of the passage, en- 
sures the attention of the whole class to what is being read, 
since none of them know which one is going to be called 
upon to recite, and tends to develop a habit of giving strict 
attention to the words of a reader or a speaker — a thing 
of no little importance in itself. 

Manners and conduct. McVenn's Good Manners and 
Right Conduct was read either silently or orally. Discus- 



198 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

sions were held only when the pupils themselves wished 
to " start something.'* The danger of mere discussion by 
the teacher lies in making the " morals " of the stories too 
obvious. 

Current events. This consisted of oral reading in class 
of interesting and informational (not merely sensational 
or funny) items from the news of the day. 

The Books Mentioned are Merely Suggestive 

The particular titles mentioned on the foregoing pages are 
not listed as being those of the best books available for 
silent-reading purposes, but are merely suggestive, of the 
types of books now available that are best suited and most 
valuable for the kind of intensive silent-reading drill that 
will develop habits of efficient study. Until we have real 
silent-reading textbooks^ with material properly and spe- 
cially organized to aid in developing the several phases of 
silent-reading ability, we cannot do better than utilize for 
our purposes good textbooks and supplementary readers 
rich in content value. Such books as the various geo- 
graphical, industrial, nature, and science readers, together 
with regular textbooks in the content subjects, represent the 
very best all-around silent-reading material yet available. 
By the use of such books we are killing at least three 
birds with one stone. We are getting our supplementary 
reading done in such a way that the children will derive 
some benefit from it; we are developing the most valuable 
kind of reading ability; and we are supplying the children 
with a broad range of valuable information. Moreover, 
that information is presented to them under just the 
psychological conditions that make for retention. The 
concentration forced upon the pupil by the right kind of 
silent-reading drill is the best guarantee that the material 
read will be remembered as well as understood. 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 199 

Why Literature is not Adapted for Silent-Reading 

Drill 

This suggests one of the principal reasons why literature 
does not furnish the best kind of drill material. It is not 
only difhcult to test the pupiFs comprehension of material 
which has been read silently; but it is also inappropriate to 
devote to such material the intensive study inherent in 
properly conducted silent-reading drill. The chief aim in 
the reading of literature is appreciation, not the develop- 
ment of reading ability, and the intensive drill and thor- 
ough testing for comprehension connected with silent- 
reading lessons is not conducive to appreciation of the 
literary merits of the selections read. 

Probably literary appreciation can be best developed 
through extensive reading of good literature outside the 
class. Literary appreciation is something that grows upon 
one principally through acquaintance and constant asso- 
ciation with good literature. I doubt if the teacher can 
do much toward developing it beyond furnishing an en- 
vironment of good books and encouraging the children to 
read them on their own initiative. If she has to lead up to 
the habit of reading and liking good literature through 
getting the children at first to read something that is not so 
good, she should not be discouraged nor shrink from the 
process. The first thing is to give the children the ability 
to read easily and understandingly. The next thing is to 
get them to read willingly almost anything that is not 
positively harmful. What if their tastes do incline at first 
toward " blood and thunder," crude humor, or cheap 
sentimentalism? If you can once get them into the read- 
ing habit, you may be able to lead them to something 
better; but if you cannot get them to read at all except 
under compulsion, you stand little chance of developing 
much literary appreciation in them. 



200 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Certainly it cannot be developed through the medium 
of the microscopical dissecting exercises usually considered 
essential to the teaching of literature for appreciation. 
Here is a chance for the anti-vivisectionists to function for 
the good of society in general and suffering school children 
in particular — • that is, in connection with the murderous 
and cruel dissecting, under the hands of misguided teach- 
ers, of the living, throbbing, emotional gems of English 
literature. 

Some who read this book will probably criticize the idea 
of a reading program and a reading method so bare of 
opportunities to develop appreciation of good literature. 
But remember my aim is not to develop literary apprecia- 
tion, but to develop reading ability. Literary apprecia- 
tion has no necessary connection with such an aim. The 
only connection there is between literary appreciation and 
reading ability is that the former is almost entirely de^ 
pendent on the latter. Therefore the sooner the latter is 
acquired, the sooner can the former become a possibility. 
Let me repeat. The study of literature has no necessary 
connection with the development of reading ability. It is 
beginning to be evident that it has no profitable connection 
with it from the point of view of reading efficiency. Hence, 
if literary material is not suitable for use in developing the 
kind of reading ability that we want to develop (and must 
develop, if our schools are to be truly efficient), then let us 
relegate such material to its proper place, namely, the, 
study of literature, while we go ahead and teach reading 
with the best type of material we can find for the purpose. 

The Kind of Material Needed for Silent Reading 

For the upper grades as well as for the lower grades we are 
greatly in need of books with informational content espe- 
cially organized and arranged into silent-reading exercises 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 201 

and accompanied by teachers' manuals giving explicit 
instructions for the treatment of each lesson. I know of 
but two attempts so far to produce books specially de- 
signed to aid in the development of real silent-reading 
abihty. These attempts have resulted in the placing of 
two sets of *^ Silent Readers " on the market within the 
past year. The Bolenius Readers are well designed and 
go far toward filling the great need of material properly 
arranged for silent-reading class drill. It would be diffi- 
cult to improve upon them as mediums of development of 
certain phases of silent-reading abihty or in their mode of 
presenting narrative material for silent-reading purposes. 
But they do not sufficiently present the type of reading 
material which the pupils meet in studying their daily 
lessons in history, geography, physiology, civics, etc. The 
special vocabularies of these studies contain great numbers 
of words not found in ordinary narrative material. Hence 
the Bolenius Readers need to be supplemented by class 
reading drill in material similar to that found in the con- 
tent subjects of the elementary school. 

The other series of readers, besides containing a pre- 
ponderance of narrative material, is scarcely more adapted 
to silent-reading class drill than is the ordinary literary 
reader since only a few of the selections are accompanied 
by adequate and specific instructions or devices for testing 
comprehension. Scattered throughout each book, how- 
ever, are a few exercises of real value; but most of them are 
designed for seat work, rather than for class drill. 

Some examples of good selections for silent reading are 
reproduced below: 

EXERCISE I 

(Material selected from Tappan's Diggers in the Earthy and 
arranged for intensive study, paragraph by paragraph. The 
first number at the end of each paragraph or section is the 



202 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

number of words in the section. The number in parentheses 
is the total number of words in the exercise up to the end of 
that particular paragraph.) 

Directions: Let the class read the first question under 
section I. Then see who in the class can find the answer first. 
Then take the second question, and so on. The whole exercise 
can be assigned as seat work, but in that case a time limit 
should be assigned. As seat work the answers to the questions 
should be written out and passed in by the pupils or rapidly 
corrected in class. 

AT THE GOLD DIGGINGS 
Section I 

When gold was first discovered in California, in 1848, people 
from all over the world made a frantic rush to get there, every 
one of them hoping that he would be lucky enough to make his 
fortune, and fearing lest the precious metal should be gone 
before he could even begin to dig. The gold that these men 
gathered came from what were called "placers"; that is, 
masses of gravel and sand along the beds of mountain streams. 
Each miner had a pan of tin or iron, which he filled half full of 
the gravel, or "pay dirt," as the miners called it. Then, hold- 
ing it under water, he shook off the mud and stones over the 
side of the pan, leaving grains of gold mixed with black sand 
at the bottom. This black sand was iron, and after a while 
the miners removed it with a magnet, dried what remained, 
and blew away the dust, leaving only the grains of gold. 
162 

1. What happened in 1848? 

2. Why did so many people rush to California when they 
heard the news? 

3. Why were they in such a hurry to get there? 

4. What are "placers"? 

5. What is "pay dirt"? 

6. How did the miners separate the gold from the gravel? 

7. What was left in the pan besides gold?, 

8. How did they get rid of the iron? 

' 9. How did they get rid of the dust? 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 203 

Section II 

Another contrivance which soon came into use was the 
" cradle." This was a long box, sometimes only a hollowed-out 
log. At the top was a sieve which sifted out the stones. Nailed 
to the bottom of the cradle were small cleats of wood, or 
"rifHes," which kept the water from running so fast as to sweep 
the gold out of the cradle with it. The cradle was placed on 
rockers and also tilted slightly. The miner shoveled the gravel 
into the top of the cradle and his partner rocked it. The sieve 
kept back the stones, the water broke up the lumps of earth 
and gravel and washed them down the cradle, and the grains 
of gold were stopped by the riffles, and sank to the bottom. 
Sometimes the "pay dirt" continued under a stream. To get 
at it, the miners often built a little canal and turned the water 
into a new channel; then they could work on the former bed 
of the river. 
166(328) 

1. What was the miner's "cradle" ? 

2. What were the riffles and what were they for? 

3. Explain how the gold was separated from the gravel by 
means of a cradle? 

4. When the streak of pay dirt extended under a stream how 
did the miners get at it? 

Section III 

Before many years had passed the gold that was near the 
surface had been gathered. The miners then followed the 
streams up into the mountains, and found that much of the 
gold had come from beds where in ancient times rivers had 
flowed. There was gold still remaining in these beds, but it 
was poorly distributed, the miners thought. Sometimes there 
would be quite an amount in one place, and then the miner 
would dig for days without finding any more. Even worse 
than this was the fact that these gravel beds were not on the 
top of the ground, but were covered up with soil and trees. 
Evidently the slow work with pans and cradles would not 
pay here; but it occurred to some one that if a powerful stream 



204 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

of water could be directed against the great banks of earth, 
as water is directed against a burning building, they would 
crumble, the dirt could be washed down sluices, and the gold 
be saved. This was done. Great reservoirs were built high up 
in the mountains, and water was brought by means of ditches 
and pipes to a convenient place. Then it was allowed to rush 
furiously through a hose and nozzle, and the great stream com- 
ing with tremendous force was played upon the banks of gravel. 
The banks crumbled, the gravel was washed into a string of 
sluices, or long boxes with riffles to catch the gold. Soon the 
miners found that if quicksilver was put into these sluices, it 
would unite with the gold and form a sort of paste called 
"amalgam." Then if this amalgam was heated, the quick- 
silver would be driven off in the form of gas, and the gold would 
remain in a beautiful yellow mass. 
290 (618) 

1. What did the miners do when the placer gold gave out? 

2. What did they find? 

3. Find two reasons why the slow work with pan or cradle 
could not be made to pay in working these new gravel beds. 

4. What plan was finally adopted for getting the gold from 
them? 

5. How did they get the necessary water pressure? 

6. What use did the miners discover for quicksilver? 

7. How was the gold separated from the quicksilver? 

Section IV 

The ancient rivers had also carried gold to the valleys, and 
to collect this a dredge, which the miners called a "gold ship," 
came into use. The " ship " part of this machine is an immense 
flat scow. Stretching out from one end is something which 
looks like a moving ladder. This is the support of an endless 
chain of buckets, each of which can bite into the gravel and 
take a mouthful of five or six hundred pounds. They drop this 
gravel into a big drum which is continually revolving. Water 
flows through the drum, and washes out the sand and bits of 
gold over large tables, where by means of riffles and quicksilver 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 205 

the gold is captured. This scow was usually on dry land at 
first ; but its digging soon made a lake, and then it floated. It 
must be more fascinating to hold a pan in your own hands and 
pick out little grains of gold or perhaps even a big piece of it 
with your own fingers, but if the gravel is good the dredge 
makes more money. 
181 (799) 

1. Where else had gold been carried by the rivers? 

2. What is another name for the dredge used in working 
these valley gold deposits? 

3. By what means is the gravel taken aboarc\ the dredge? 

4. What is said of the amount of gravel each bucket holds? 

5. What do the buckets do with the gravel when they have 
brought it aboard? 

6. How is the gold separated from the gravel in this method 
of mining? 

7. Is the dredging begun on dry land or on a lake or river? 

8. Then why is it necessary to have a scow? 

Section V 

In Alaska the great difficulty in mining is that, t. xept at the 
surface, the ground is frozen all the year round. At first, the 
miners used to thaw the place where they wished to dig by 
building wood fires; but this was a slow method, and n ^w the 
thawing is done by steam. They carry the steam in a p.oe to 
the place where the digging is to be done, and send it thro ^gh 
a hose. At the end of the hose is a pointed steel tube. Thty 
hammer this tube into the ground and let some steam pass 
through the nozzle. This softens the ground so that picks and 
shovels may be used. There is generally cold enough in Alaska, 
but once at least the miners had to manufacture it. The gold- 
bearing gravel was deep, the ground was flat, and it was often 
overflowed. They set up a freezing plant, and shut in their 
land with a bulkhead of ice several feet thick. Then they 
pumped out what water was already in and did their work with 
no more trouble. 
181 (980) 



2o6 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

1. Why IS mining difficult in Alaska? 

2. What was the first method of overcoming this difficulty? 

3. How is it done now? 

4. In what peculiar way was one mine kept from being 
flooded? 

Section VI 

When gold began to grow less in the California gravel, the 
miners looked for it in the rocks on the mountain-side. The 
placer miners laughed at them and called their shafts "coyote 
holes"; but in time the placers failed, while nearly all of our 
gold to-day comes from veins of white quartz in the rocks. 
A vein of |,old is the most capricious thing in the world. It 
may be so tivY that it can hardly be seen, then widen and grow 
rich in gold, t en suddenly come to an end. This is why a new 
mine is so ui :ertain an enterprise. The gold may hold out 
and bring for mes to the investors, or it may fail, and then all 
they will hav . to show for their money is the memory that they 
put it into a lole in the ground. The managers of a few of the 
well-establifxied mines, however, have explored so far as to 
make sure -nat there is gold enough for many years of digging, 
171 (Asi) 

1. WT.ere did the miners next look for gold? 

2. V here does most of our gold come from at present? 

3. iVhy is a new mine a very uncertain enterprise to invest 
• money in? 

," Section VII 

The mining engineer must be a very wide-awake man. It is 
noX enough for him simply to remember what was taught him 
in *t.he schools of mining; he must be bright enough to invent 
new ways of meeting difficulties. No two mines are alike, 
and he must be ready for all sorts of emergencies. A gold mine 
now consists of a shaft or pit dug several hundred feet down 
into the rock, with levels or galleries running off from it and 
with big openings like rooms made where the rock was dug out. 
The roofs of the rooms are supported by great timbers. To 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 207 

break away the rock, the miner makes a hole with a rock drill 
worked by electricity or compressed air, puts powder or dyna- 
mite into the hole, and explodes it. The broken rock is then 
raised to the surface and crushed in a " stamping mill." Here 
the ore is fed into a great steel box called a "mortar." Five 
immense hammers, often weighing a thousand pounds apiece, 
drop down upon the ore, one after another, until it is fine 
enough to go through a wire screen in the front of the box. 
When two hundred or more of these hammers are pounding 
away with all their might a stamping mill is a pretty noisv 
place. The ore, crushed to a fine mud, now runs over sloping 
tables covered with copper. Sticking to the top of the copper 
is a film of quicksilver. This holds fast whatever gold there 
may be and makes an amalgam, which is scraped off from time 
to time, and the quicksilver is driven from the gold by heat. 
276 (1427) 

1. What sort of a man must a mining engineer be? 

2. Why? 

3. Describe a gold mine. 

4. What is timber used for in a gold mine? 

5. How is the gold-bearing rock broken up? 

6. What is done with it after bringing it to the surface? 

7. Why is a stamping mill a noisy place? 

8. What is the ore like when it leaves the stamping mill? 

9. How is the gold separated from it? 

10. Of what use is quicksilver in the process? 

Section VIII 

Gold that is not united with other metals is called ''free 
milling gold." Much of it, however, is found in combination 
with one metal or another, and is known as **rebeUious" or 
"refractory" gold. Such gold may sometimes be set free by 
heat, and sometimes by chemicals. One way is by the use of 
chlorine gas, and the story of it sounds almost like "The house 
that Jack built." It might run somewhat like this: This is the 
salt that furnishes the chlorine. This is the chlorine gas that 
unites with the gold. This is the chloride that is formed when 



2o8 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

the chlorine gas unites with the gold. This is the water that 
washes from the tank the chloride that is formed when the 
chlorine gas unites with the gold. This is the sulphate of iron 
that unites with the chlorine gas of the chloride that the water 
washes from the tank that is formed when the chlorine gas 
unites with the gold — and leaves the gold free. 

i68 (1595) 

1. What is "free milling gold"? 

2. What is "refractory" gold? 

3. What are two ways of setting free refractory gold? 

4. What is the chlorine obtained from? 

5. What does it unite with? 

6. What substance is formed when this union takes place? 

7. What part does water take in the process? 

8. How is the gold finally freed from the chloride? 

Section IX 

Another method is by the use of cyanide. More than a 
century ago a chemist discovered that if gold was put into 
water containing a little cyanide, the gold would dissolve, while 
quartz and any metals that might be united with the gold would 
settle in the tank. The water in which the gold is dissolved is 
now run into boxes full of shavings of zinc and is "precipitated " 
upon them; that is, the tiny particles of gold in the water fall 
upon the zinc and cling to it. Zinc melts more easily than gold, 
so if this gilded zinc is put into a furnace, the zinc melts and the 
gold is set free. Very often gold is found combined with lead 
or copper. It must then be melted or smelted in great furnaces. 
The metal is heavier than the rock and settles to the bottom 
of the furnace. It is then drawn off and the gold is separated 
from the other metals, usually by electricity. 
165 (1760) 

1. How can gold be dissolved in water? 

2. After being dissolved, how is the gold removed from the 
water? 

3. Then how is it separated from the zinc? 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 209 

4. What two metals are very commonly found combined 
with gold? 

5. When thus found how is the gold obtained? 

Section X 

Sometimes large pieces of gold called "nuggets " are found by 
miners. The largest one known was found in Australia. It 
weighed 190 pounds and was worth $42,000. Sometimes 
spongy lumps of gold are found; but as a general thing gold 
comes from the little specks scattered through veins in rock, 
and much work has to be done before it can be made into 
coins or jewelry. It is too soft for such uses unless some alloy, 
usually copper or silver, is mixed with it to make it harder. 
Sometimes it is desirable to know how much alloy has been 
added. The jeweler then makes a mark with the article on a 
peculiar kind of black stone called a " touchstone," and by the 
color of the golden mark he can tell fairly well how nearly pure 
the article is. To be more accurate he pours nitric acid upon 
the mark. This eats away the alloy and leaves only the gold. 
159 (1919) 

1. What are nuggets? 

2. What was the largest one ever found? 

3. How much was it worth? 

4. Are large nuggets common? 

5. How is gold usually found? 

6. Why is pure gold not used for coins and jewelry? 

7. How is it made harder? 

8. How can a jeweler tell how much alloy has been added 
to the gold in any article made of gold? 

Section XI 

Gold is a wonderful metal. It is of beautiful color; it can be 
hammered so thin that the light will shine through it; few 
acids affect it, and the oxygen which eats away iron does not 
harm it. Pure gold is spoken of as being " twenty-four carats 
fine," from carat, an old weight equal to one twenty-fourth of 



210 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

an ounce troy. Watchcases are from eight to eighteen carats 
fine; chains are seldom more than fourteen; and the gold coins 
of the United States are about eleven parts of gold and one of 
copper. Coins wear in passing from one person to another, and 
that is why the edges are milled, so that it may be more easily 
seen when they have become too light to be used as coins. 
When such pieces come into the hands of the government, they 
must be recoined. 
145 (2064) 

1. What four valuable qualities of gold are mentioned here? 

2. How much alloy is there in gold that is twenty-four carats 
fine? 

3. What is a "carat"? 

4. What are the proportions of gold and alloy in U.S. gold 
coins ? 

5. Why are the edges of coins milled? 

EXERCISE II 

A BRAVE HAWAIIAN PRINCESS 

From Mirick and Holmes, Home Life Around the World 

(This exercise consists of paragraphs in which the sentences 
have been disarranged. The sentences are numbered. The 
task of the pupil is to decide in what order the sentences should 
be read in order to give proper sequence to the author's 
thoughts. The proper order can be easily indicated either 
orally or in writing by means of the numbers at the beginning 
of each sentence.) 

I 

1. He had a beautiful daughter named Kapiolani. 

2. The home of this king and of the princess was near the 
great volcano from which ever rises the white cloud of 
steam that is seen far out on the waters of the ocean. 

3. In the days, long ago, when Kaluhe had grown to man- 
hood, there was a powerful king who ruled the brown- 
skinned, savage people of the Hawaiian Islands. 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 211 



II 

1. One was named "Fiery-Eyed-Canoe-Breaker." 

2. The mightiest of these spirits, and their ruler, was the 
goddess, Pele. 

3. Kapiolani, the king, and all the people, believed that the 
terrible fire-mountain, as they called the volcano, was the 
home of evil spirits. 

4. Another was called " Red-Hot-Mountain-Lif ting-ClouJs, " 
and the others had equally terrifying names. 

K. Pele had several sisters. 



Ill 

1. Some sweet, red berries grew there of which thty were very 
fond. 

2. "Some we also eat." ' 

3. These simple-minded savages were very careful not to 
displease Pele and her sisters. 

4. " Pele, here are your berries. We give some to you." 

5. They were particularly careful not to take anything that 
grew near the volcano without asking permission of the 
goddess. 

6. Then they ate all they wanted without fear, because they 
thought the spirit was pleased with their gift. 

7. But when they picked them they were accustomed to 
throw a few in the direction of the crater, sayirg: 

IV 

1. This story of Pele and the ocean spirits was one that 
Nalima used to tell Kaluhe as they sat together under the 
palm trees making cloth. 

2. They also went on long journeys and had strange adven- 
tures. 

3. It was supposed that these fire-spirits sometimes quar- 
reled. 



212 STANDARDIZED TESTS 



1. At his command they leaped up the sides of the volcano. 

2. Pele replied from her home in the volcano, "You are not 
my master. I refuse to obey you." 

3. Once upon a time the god of the ocean became very 
angry with Pele, the fire-spirit, because she would not 
obey him. 

4. They flowed over the edge of the crater and filled it full 
of water to the very top. 

5. Then the god of the ocean summoned his water-spirits. 

6. He came one day to the foot of the fire-mountain and 
shouted, "Pele, come forth." 

7. Huge waves rolled in from the boundless sea, and piled 
one on top of the other on the shore. 

1. All the waters to the last drop were hurled from the 
crater back to their home in the ocean. 

2. Together they set to work to drive the water-spirits from 
their home. 

3. For one short moment it seemed that Pele and the other 
fire-spirits were drowned and that their fires were quenched 
forever. 

4. They rushed to help her. 

5. But she cried aloud to her sisters. 

6. Then they heated them still more and great clouds of 
steam rose into the air. 

7. First they heated the waters until they boiled. 

8. So Pele ruled once more in her mountain. 

9. There was a fearful explosion. 

10. Almost in despair, exerting all their power, they heated 
the water many times hotter than before. 

VII 

I. The savages of the Hawaiian Islands believed such stories 
as this until white people from our own country went to 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 213 

them and taught them that there were neither water- 
spirits nor fire-spirits. 

2. The beautiful princess, Kapiolani, determined to prove 
to her people that they need fear these spirits no longer. 

3. How she did it is told in the following story. 



VIII 

1. When, at night, the fires of the crater lit up the sky and 
the earth shook, the mountain rumbled, and the lava 
gushed up over its edge and flowed down the mountain- 
side, she used to tremble with fear as she lay on her bed of 
grass-mats and pray to the fire-spirits to protect her from 
harm. 

2. When Kapiolani was a little girl, she had been taught to 
fear Pele and her sisters. 

3. Many times she had gone to the mountain to pick the 
sacred berries, but had never dared eat them until some 
had been offered to the goddess. 

IX 

1. She had come to believe that there was no Pele and that 
there were no fire-spirits. 

2. But they would not believe unless she proved it to them. 

3. She wanted her people to believe this also. , 

4. But now she had grown to be a woman. 



1. If I come back unhurt, you will know that there are no 
fire-spirits. 

2. So one day she walked up the side of the fire-mountain 
with a great company of her people. 

3. But she said, "I will descend into the crater." 

4. As they came near the crater, they urged her to go back. 

5. " If I do not return safe, continue to fear Pele." 



214 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

XI 

1. All expected the angry goddess to appear and burn up the 
daring princess. 

2. She pushed a stick into the sacred ashes. She ate the 
sacred berries of Pele in her very home. She cried aloud 
to the spirits to destroy her if they could. 

3. Then she went down into the crater with a few who were 
willing to die with her. 

4. From that time the people ceased believing in fire-spirits, 
and they loved and honored their beautiful princess even 
more than they had before. 

5. But when she stood unharmed and returned in safety, 
they shouted, "There is no Pele! There are no fire- 
spirits." 

XII 

1. Since the time when the white people taught Kapiolani 
not to believe in the fire-spirits, people have gone there 
from many lands, not only from our own country, but 
from China, Japan, and from Portugal and Italy. 

2. To-day the Hawaiian Islands belong to the United States. 

3. All these things happened a hundred years ago. 

4. They have cleared away the jungles and have planted 
tropical gardens in their place — plantations of sugar, 
rice, coffee, and pineapples. 

5. The beautiful city of Honolulu now stands where Kaluhe 
once lived. 

6. Instead of grass huts we shall find neat little cottages of 
wood. 

EXERCISE III 

(In this exercise words are omitted from the text. These 
words are listed at the top of each section. The pupils are to 
fill in the blanks with the proper words as they read. Each 
word can be used but once in a section. There are some words 
in each Ust that do not belong in any of the blanks.) 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 215 

GRANNIE AND THE TWINS 
From Perkins, The Cave Twins 

I 

Stirredy sticks, she, acorns, lap, sat, mouth, sun, trees, woman, 
reach, piece, burning, front, sat, vast, spring. 

One bright morning of early , long ages ago, the sun 

peered through the on the edge of a forest, 

and sent a shaft of yellow sunlight right into the of a 

great, dark cave. In of the cave a bright fire was 

burning, and on a rock before it an old woman. In 

her lap was a of birch-bark, and on the bark was a heap 

of She was roasting them in the ashes and eating 

them. At her right hand, within easy , there was a 

pile of broken and tree branches, and every now and 

then the old put on fresh wood and ...... the coals to 

keep the fire bright. 

n 

Nor, climbed, titer e, shore, shining, where, down, blue, forests, any 9 

far, lay, slightest. 

A little path ran from the front of the cave the old 

woman sat, down the sloping hillside to a river, and the 

morning sun across it made a bridge of dazzling light 

from shore to shore. 

Beyond the river were green fields and forests, and 

beyond the high hills over which the sun every 

morning. What lay beyond those blue hills neither 

the old woman any of the clan of the Black Bear had 

the idea. 

ni 

From, sizzling, sound, lit, beginning, trees, seemed, cracked, made, 
no, above, little, way, long. 
Everything quiet and peaceful on that spring morn- 
ing so ago. The trees were to turn green and little 



2i6 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

plants were already pushing their through the carpet 

of dead leaves. A robin upon the branches of a tree 

the cave and sang his morning song. 

There was no other sound except the of a wet stick 

upon the fire, and the snapping noise by the old woman 

when she took a roasted acorn the fire and 

it with her teeth. 

IV 

Comb J really, been, hair, twig, covered, not, ragged, her, long, could, 

only. 

The old woman was pretty to look at. Her face was 

brown as leather and with wrinkles, and her hair hung 

about it in gray locks. It was no wonder that her 

was rough and ragged, for it had never been combed her whole 

life , and she was quite old — oh, as old as forty, maybe! 

But she could n't help her hair being like that any more 

than she help being forty, because there was not a 

single yet made in the whole world! 

V 

Nothing, leather, nuts, teeth, watch, left, noise, brown. 

It was a mystery how she cracked the so well, be- 
cause she had only a few left in her mouth. For clothing 

she had . . . . . . but the skin of a deer fastened over her 

shoulder by a thorn, and tied around her waist by a 

thong. 

VI 

Roasted, dry, rustling, and, kept, she, nothing, in, unusual, against, 

there, an. 

Although she seemed to be thinking of but her nuts, 

the little bright eyes of the old woman close watch in 

every direction, and her ears quick to hear every 

sound. If a twig snapped, or there was a noise in the 

underbrush, she was ready in instant to fling fresh 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 217 

sticks on the fire and make it glow red the black open- 
ing of the cave. 

VII 

Quietly, puzzled, fox, both, sheltered, see, leap, wild, how, faintest, 
girls, tell, alike, were, size, stealthily, dare. 

She knew that no animal, however fierce and hungry, 

would come near the leaping flames. Yet watchful as 

she was, she did not two children who were creeping 

toward her, over the great rocks which the 

mouth of the cave. 

They were a boy and a girl, and from their they must 

have been about eight years old. They had bright 

twinkling eyes and flaming red hair, and were dressed in 

skins of red foxes of almost the same color. You could 

at a glance that they were twins, but it would have any 

one to tell whether they were both boys or both , or 

one of each kind. They came down over the rocks so 

that not even the quick ears of the old woman heard the 

sound. 

VIII 

Darkness, over, fire, near, sudden, their, two, almost, fours, she, 
right, simple, instant. 

When they had reached the ground, they stopped, 

and at the same opened their mouths and howled 

exactly like young wolves! 

The noise was so and so near that the old woman 

never thought of her at all. She simply screamed and 

fell over backwards into the cave. Then she rolled 

over and scuttled on all out of sight in the as 

fast as she could go. 

IX 

Scolded, they, hack, with, acorns, dance, jumped, red, stout, like, 

angry. 

The acorns in her lap flew in every and rolled down 

the hillside. The boy and girl to the ground, shrieking 



2i8 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

with laughter. In a moment the old woman was again 

in the door of the cave. She had a stick in her hand 

and she looked very angry. She shook the stick at the Twins 

and them so fast that the sound of it was like the 

chattering of an squirrel in a tree-top. 

X 

CanHy shrieking, while, taste, catch, best, just, this, English, you, 
teach, not, river, until, reach. 

Now, of course, I cannot tell you the words she used, 

but, translated into , this is what she said: — 

"You horrid little catamounts, if I you, I'll 

you better manners! I'll give you such a , of this 

stick that you'll not need more till the runs dry." 

The twins sprang up, still with laughter, and danced 

about the fire just out of of the woman's stick. 

**But you catch us," they screamed. 

XI 

Heart, afraid, wonder, fire, sticks, her, were, they, flew, lookedy 
angry, glared, head, scare, heads. 

Their red locks of hair about in the wind as they 

danced, until it almost as if red flames bursting 

from their heads. The old woman at them helplessly. 

"Dance away," she cried, "dance away, you red-headed 

rascals! I shan't need to put on the fire while you are 

here. Your red hair would away the saber-toothed 

tiger himself! No you are not afraid to run in the 

forest alone! With such on you, you are as safe as if 

you were in the of the cave." 

EXERCISE IV 

(This type of exercise is designed to make the job of learning 
the meanings of unfamiliar words a pleasant game instead of a 
monotonous task. Instead of hunting in the dictionary for the 
definitions of words, the pupils are given the definition and then 
they read to find the word which fits the definition.) 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 219 

WATER IN THE AIR 
From Van Buskirk and Smith, The Science oj Everyday Life, pp. 105-06 

Water is always present in the air in the form of an invisible 
gas called water vapor. In order to understand how the air 
contains water in a gaseous form it is helpful to compare it 
with a sponge, (i) A sponge can hold water. So can the air 
hold water in the form of water vapor. Water in a liquid form 
is able to soak in between the parts of the sponge. In some 
such way it is possible for water vapor to be soaked up by the 
air. (2) The sponge can hold only a limited amount of water. 
That is also true of the air in regard to water vapor. (3) When 
a sponge is holding all the water possible it is said to be satu- 
rated. The same expression is used with reference to the air 
when it is holding all the water vapor it can. 

Find words in the above paragraph to fit the following 
definitions: 

I. To examine in order to discover likeness and unlikeness. 

3. Filled to the limit of capacity with liquid. 

3. Cannot be seen. 

4. In the form of gas. 

The air gets its water vapor by means of a process called 
evaporation. This is the changing of water from a visible liquid 
into an invisible gas. The rapidity of the process of evapora- 
tion depends upon four factors: (i) the amount of water vapor 
already present in the air; (2) the temperature; (3) the air- 
pressure; (4) movement of the air. 

If the air is already saturated with water vapor, it is impos- 
sible for more vapor to enter, just as it is impossible for a 
sponge to soak up more water when it is saturated. Dry air, 
on the other hand, allows water to enter easily. 

Heat increases the rapidity of evaporation. Especially when 
the sun is shining and the air is warm, large quantities of water 
are evaporated from the surface of the earth, particularly from 
the surfaces of rivers, lakes, and oceans. 

1. The process of a liquid changing into a gas* 

2. Makes greater. 



1^20 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

3. Able to be seen. 

4. Being in a certain place; being at hand. 

5. An act which continues and progresses; an operation. 

6. Uncertain amounts of anything; anything that can be 
increased, divided, or measured. 

The third factor which helps to determine the rapidity of 
evaporation is the air-pressure. There is more rapid evapora- 
tion when the air-pressure is low. By using an exhaust-pump, 
thus reducing the pressure of the air, it is possible to make 
water evaporate so quickly that it actually boils when cool. 
The commotion of boiling is caused by the expansion or enlarge- 
ment of particles of the liquid into a gaseous form. This 
change occurs close to the applied heat. As water vapor occu- 
pies about sixteen hundred times the space formerly occupied 
by the water, it is much lighter and rises to the surface in the 
form of bubbles. Up in the tops of high mountains boiUng is 
not sufficient to cook some kinds of food. Why is this so? 

Evaporation takes place more rapidly in moving air than in 
still air. After a rain the streets dry quickly if the wind is 
strong. 

1. Increase in size or extent. 

2. Making smaller. 

3. FiUs. 

4. To fix, settle, or decide. 

5. In truth; really. 

6. Any thing or circumstance which helps to bring about a 
certain result. 

7. Takes place; happens. 

8. Violent agitation; tumult; disorder. 

9. Enough. 

10. Small pieces. 
The oceans of the world are the greatest source of the water 
vapor in the air. Large inland bodies of water, such as the 
Great Lakes and the Amazon River, furnish a large amount, 
as do all the smaller lakes and rivers. The surface of the solid 
earth is also constantly losing water to the air. When winds 
blow from a cool to a warmer region, they keep increasing their 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 221 

capacity to hold water, and absorb moisture from anything 
they can. The trade winds, for example, blow toward the 
hottest parts of the earth. They cause so much water to be 
evaporated from the earth that many of the regions over which 
they blow are deserts. Other sources of water in the air are 
the living bodies of plants and animals. 

1. Power of receiving or containing. 

2. Those things from which anything arises or originates. 

3. To drink in; to suck or swallow up; to take in. 

4. The form taken by liquids or solids under the influence of 
heat, or reduction of pressure. 

5. All the time; continually. 

6. The upper side or face of anything. 

Plants are constantly giving off water by evaporation. Some 
of it is a result of breathing, since water is formed among other 
substances when food is oxidized in the cells. 

By far the largest amount of water that is given off by plants, 
however, is transpired. As you know, plants absorb much 
water from the soil, and along with it, mineral foods that the 
soil contains. When it enters the roots of the plants, the water, 
containing the mineral food, passes from cell to cell in the 
plant body. Since more water flows through the plant than 
can be used to manufacture plant food, some of it is evapo- 
rated through the openings in the leaves to the outside air. 
The amount that may evaporate is very great. A grass plant 
may transpire in one day more than its weight. Botanists 
have estimated that about half a ton of water may evaporate 
in a day from an ordinary city lot covered with grass. The 
process by which water passes out of the leaves is called 
transpiration. 

1. To pass off as vapor; to breathe out. 

2. That which is real; matter or material from which any- 
thing is made. 

3. Reckoned; computed. 

4. Usual; common. 

5. To be changed into an oxide. 

6. The act of breathing out or passing off as vapor. 



222 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

• EXERCISE V 

(This type of exercise is designed to develop the habit of 
concentration on the part of the pupils. They like it because 
of the puzzle element involved.) 

DISARRANGED SENTENCES 
From Tappan's The Story oj the Roman People, pp. 99-100 

1. The countries circling / **the world" meant /conquered 
Hannibal, / around the Mediterranean Sea / when the 
Romans / at the time. 

2. The Romans now / lying to the west / of Italy, / held the 
chief power / in all the lands. 

3. They had already / toward the east / when they sup- 
pressed / and agreed to protect / taken one step / the 
pirates of the Adriatic Sea / the Adriatic coast / the 
Greek cities along. 

4. But the condition / Greece could have protected / since 
those days / in earlier times / her own cities, / had 
changed greatly / of affairs in the East. 

5. When the Romans / Alexander the Great began / were 
subduing the Latins, / about the time / his conquests. 

6. Philip II, had left him /but this was a small / his father / 
a wonderful series / realm compared with what he / and 
he began / meant to win, / of victories, / Macedonia and 
Greece. 

7. But also / and part of India / not only Macedonia and 
Greece, / Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Persia, / when he 
died, he ruled. 

8. Empire / among / this / was / divided / generals / his. 

9. Have governed this / could not / but his generals / him- 
self could / possibly Alexander / enormous domain. 

10. And finally the / they and / vast empire broke up / their 
successors / into three kingdoms / quarreled and fought / 
1. Egypt. 2. Syria and Asia Minor. 3. Macedonia and 
Greece. 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 223 

11. Cities which were under / While the Romans / the king 
of Macedonia, Philip V, / were contending with Hanni- 
bal / attacked some Greek / the protection of Rome / 
who was an ally of the Carthaginians, / 

12. First / this / Macedonian / led / to / war / the. 

13. And with most / was subdued, / excellent reason / with 
Philip again, / after Hannibal / war broke out. 

14. Antiochus of Syria / divide Egypt / plotted to / he and 
King / between them. 

15. Philip would control / the ^Egean Sea / on the shores of / 
the Greek cities / if this plan should succeed. 

16. Came much of / a vast amount of trading / ^Egean Sea, 
the Black Sea, and the eastern part of the Mediterra- 
nean, / was carried on in the / needed in Italy / part of 
the world / the grain / and from this. 

17. Of her food / if Philip was successful, then he, / whenever 
he chose / a large part / an enemy of Rome, / could shut 
off. 

18. Of the Romans / to arouse / this was enough / the 
interest. 

19. Might think / not trouble himself / about what the 
Romans / Philip did / but attacked Egypt and Athens. 

20. And his guardians / was a boy / appealed to Rome / the 
king of Egypt / for help, 

21. That had for /as for Athens /of the Romans /some 
time been / an ally. 

22. Of her people / not to harass / the friends / Rome warned 
Philip. 

23. That Macedonia / as Rome / Philip replied that / but 
if they / he should prefer peace / was as powerful / they 
would learn / wished to fight. 

24. Two ranges of hills, met in Greece / and shaped like / of 
Philip and the Romans / at the Cynocephalae, or dogs' 
heads, / then the armies / the heads of dogs. 

25. General Flaminius / by the Roman / thoroughly de- 
feated / Philip was. 



224 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

EXERCISE VI 

(Material selected from Winslow's The United States,'^ and 
arranged to bring out the chief thought or topic in each sec- 
tion.) 

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE SOUTHERN SECTION 

Section i 

Question: How do the physical features of the southeastern 
part of the United States differ from those of the 
northeastern part? 
In passing from the northeastern part of the country to the 
southeastern part, we go from a region of rocky hills and many 
lakes to one containing a great amount of comparatively level 
land, well suited to agriculture. The Appalachian system of 
mountains extends nearly across the eastern part of this sec- 
tion. In the South, as in the North, these ancient mountains 
have been so worn down that in places they have become mere 
hills, or even level land. In North Carolina and Tennessee 
there are still hills and mountains of considerable height. 
Mount Mitchell, the highest of the system, is more than a mile 
high. 

io6 

Section 2 

Question: What is the Piedmont Belt? 

A wide belt of country lying next to the mountains on the 
east is nearly level, or covered with low hills with river valleys 
among them. This section is sometimes called the Piedmont 
Belt. The word piedmont means foot of the mountain. The 
name is given to the section because it lies along the foot of 
the Appalachian Mountains, where the land has been formed 
by the wearing away of the mountains. 
72 (178) 

» Winslow, Isaac Oscar, The United States, pp. 91 ff. Boston: D. C. Heath and 
Company, 1910. 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 225 

Section 3 

Problem: Explain the formation of the Atlantic coastal plain. 
The strip of country between the Piedmont Belt and the 
ocean is generally low, level, and sandy. It is a part of the 
Atlantic coastal plain. All this land was once beneath the 
ocean. The soil was formed by the wearing effect of weaves on 
the shore, or from mud carried into the ocean by rivers. 

56 (234) 

Section 4 

Question: How do the northern and southern coasts differ? 
There is a striking contrast between the northern and south- 
ern coasts. While in the North the sinking of the lands has 
produced islands, drowned valleys, and deep harbors, in the 
South the land has risen enough to make dry land of a strip of 
the ocean bed. Since mud was spread evenly by the waves over 
the ocean floor, this floor became level land after it rose above 
the water. The even bed of the ocean made an unbroken coast 
line, without many capes and bays. 

86 (320) 

Section 5 

Question: What are barrier reefs? 

Since this period of rising, the southern coast has settled 
again a very little. This has been an advantage by increasing 
the depth of water in the mouths of rivers and in the harbors. 
In the shallow water near the shore the waves have washed 
up sand from the bottom and formed long islands called sand 
bars or barrier reefs. In a similar manner a low coastal plain 
has been formed along the Gulf of Mexico. 

75 (395) 

Section 6 

Question: What are the Florida Keys? 

A large part of southern Florida is elevated but little above 
the sea, and portions of it consist of extensive marshes or 



226 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

swamps. The largest of these is called the Everglades. The 
islands near the southern coast are called the Florida Keys 
from a Spanish word which means islands. 

49 (444) 

Section 7 

Question: How are coral reefs and islands formed? 

The surface of portions of the land in southern Florida 
and upon the Keys has been formed by minute animals called 
coral polyps. In parts of the ocean where the water is warm 
and shallow these animals live in great numbers attached to 
the bottom, and when they die their stony skeletons remain. 
They continually grow and die, and as the masses are raised 
above the surface, coral reefs or coral islands are formed, which 
the force of the waves slowly crumbles into soil. 

84 (528) 

Section 8 

Question: What three States of the Southern Section have no 
seacoast? v 

In the Southern Section we may include the States bordering 
on the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, from North 
Carolina to Texas, and the States of Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
Oklahoma. 

32 (560) 

Section 9 

Question: Why has the development of the resources of this 
section been so slow? 
These States, which are usually called the Southern States, 
are among the richest possessions of the country. For many 
years they have suffered the terrible results of the Civil War, 
in which they lost a vast amount of property and the lives of 
many of their bravest young men. But since the close of that 
war they have advanced rapidly in wealth and general pros- 
perity. 

65 (62s) 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 227 

Section 10 

Problem : Give some comparisons to illustrate the size of Texas. 
When the rich and well- watered lands of the "sunny South" 
are fully occupied and cultivated, they will provide homes for 
many miUions of people. Texas is the largest of all our States. 
It is difficult to realize its size. It contains four times as much 
territory as the whole of New England. It is larger than any 
country of Europe except Russia. It is believed that it will 
at some time be able to support one half as many people as the 
whole country now contains. 
87(712) 

EXERCISE VII 

(Showing the adaptability of encyclopaedic material to 
effective silent-reading drill.) 

THE STORY OF COAL* 

Section i 

Ages before man lived upon the earth portions of it were 
covered with a dense growth of vegetation far more luxuriant 
than that found now in the densest tropical jungle. By the 
lowering of the level of the land these dense forests were cov- 
ered by the ocean, and while resting for ages on the bottom of 
the sea they were buried by mud. The land again rose and 
appeared above the ocean. The mud was hardened into rock 
and the buried vegetation by heat and pressure was turned into 
coal. This process was repeated many times through the 
uncounted ages and for this reason we find the coal in veins, one 
above another and separated from each other by layers of rock. 
Green plants can grow only in direct sunlight. Since the plants 
of the coal period owed their growth to the influence of the sun, 
and since the heat energy released by burning the coal is the 
same energy gathered from the sun's rays and stored in their 

^ O'Shea, M. V., editor, et al. World Book, vol. m, pp. 1442-43. Chicago: 
W. F, Quarrie and Company. 



228 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

tissues ages ago by the plants from which the coal is made, coal 
is sometimes called buried sunshine, a very appropriate name. 

191 

Questions: 

1. How did the dense forests of the coal period come to be 
covered with water? 

2. What happened to them while thus buried? 

3. Did the mud become rock under water or above? 

4. By what means did the buried vegetation become coal? 

5. Why is coal found in veins one above another? 

6. What is the origin of the layers of rock separating the coal 
veins? 

7. Why is BURIED SUNSHINE an appropriate name for coal? 

Section 2 
Mineral coal, as hard and soft coal is generally called, differs 
from charcoal in several particulars. Since it was formed under 
great pressure it is more compact, and since the air was practi- 
cally excluded during its formation many of the gases which 
are driven off in making charcoal were changed into sub- 
stances that combined with the coal. These are compounds of 
hydrogen and carbon with a few other substances and their 
presence in varying proportions gives us the different varieties 
of coal. 

81 (272) 

Questions: 

1. What name is applied to both hard and soft coal? 

2. Why is coal more solid and compact than charcoal? 

3. When coal is being formed, what becomes of the gases 
that cannot escape because of lack of air? 

4. Why is air practically excluded during the process of coal 
formation? 

5. What are the chief chemical elements composing these 
compounds? 

6. What causes the difference in the different varieties of 
coal? 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 229 

Section 3 

Three general varieties of coal are recognized in commerce. 
The classification is founded on the degree of hardness and the 
varieties are anthracite^ bituminous, and lignite. 

Anthracite is the hardest and best variety. It is often called 
stone coal because it is so hard and is supposed to have been the 
first coal formed, since it occurs deep in the earth. It was 
probably subjected to greater heat than bituminous coal, 
since it is almost pure carbon. The most extensive anthracite 
mines are in Eastern Pennsylvania. The veins do not lie 
horizontally, for they have been moved by mighty convulsions 
of the earth. Some are near the surface, while others are found 
at great depths. Anthracite burns with little or no flame and 
without smoke, and produces intense heat. Its chief uses are 
for warming dwellings and for manufacture of water-gas. 

143 (415) 
Questions: 

1. Into what three general varieties is coal classified? 

2. What is the basis of classification? 

3. Why is anthracite often called stone coal? 

4. What is supposed to be true of anthracite coal on account 
of its being found so deep in the earth? 

5. Why is it believed that anthracite was subjected to 
greater heat than bituminous coal in the process of forma- 
tion? 

6. Which variety of coal contains the highest percentage of 
carbon? 

7. What is Eastern Pennsylvania noted for? 

8. If anthracite coal was formed at great depths, why is it 
sometimes found at or near the surface of the earth? 

9. What are the chief uses of anthracite coal? 

I have devoted considerable space to the preceding 
silent-reading passages in an attempt to make clear to the 
reader the kind of material we have found best suited to 
class drill, and its arrangement in such a way that it can 



230 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

be utilized by the teacher with the least amount of extra 
effort on her part. 

Ways of Using Silent-Reading Material 

There are several different ways in which such material 
can be handled so as to furnish live class drill. They may 
be summarized as follows: 

1. The simplest way, and the one which demands least 
extra work on the teacher's part, is to give the class a cer- 
tain amount of time in which to read a definite amount of 
material and then call upon one of the class to tell, with 
books closed, as much as he can remember of what he has 
read. While he recites, the rest of the class watch for 
errors or omissions. When he has finished, other members 
of the class correct errors of statement and supply impor- 
tant details which he may have left out. This is good drill, 
but should not be used exclusively. There should be 
variety in silent-reading drill as well as in any other. The 
method possesses the special advantage of giving the child 
a large amount of practice in oral expression under condi- 
tions least conducive to self-consciousness. He really has 
something to say, some one to say it to, and an object 
in saying it. Ability to think and talk well at the same 
time develops with surprising rapidity under such condi- 
tions. 

2. The class may be given a certain amount of material 
to be read in a limited time; and then, with books closed, 
the pupils may answer from memory questions asked by 
the teacher covering the important facts in the assignment. 
To save valuable time in class, and in order that the ques- 
tions may be well chosen, they should always be prepared 
and written down by the teacher beforehand. This is 
probably the poorest of the methods I am suggesting. It 
forces rapidity and concentration in the reading; but it 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 231 

gives the advantage to the child with good memory, and it 
affords the pupils no definite objective in their reading. 

3. The class may be asked questions, the answers to 
which are given or suggested in the material to be read. 
Then the pupils read to find the answers. The speed ele- 
ment takes care of itself here, since each child is anxious 
to be the first to find the answer. In order to give the 
slower readers a chance it is well to let the faster readers 
drop out of the game in turn as each answers a question 
correctly until a question is given to which none of the re- 
maining pupils can find the answer. Then one of the 
better readers may be permitted to answer it and the whole 
class will be in the game once more. To illustrate, here is 
a class of seven pupils: 

A B C D E F G 

Let A be the first one to discover the answer to the first 
question asked. He is permitted to answer it, and is 
thereby automatically debarred from answering the next 
one unless there is no one else who can answer it. Suppose 
that B gets the second question, and C the third, and that 
none of the four remaining pupils can get the answer to the 
fourth question within a reasonable length of time. The 
teacher may then appeal to A, B, and C, one of whom may 
answer the question correctly. Then she begins over 
again with the whole class. I have never yet seen a class 
fail to react with interest and enthusiasm to this type of 
drill. It gives the child a definite aim in his reading, and 
tends to develop the habit of rapidly skimming a para- 
graph or a page in search of a definite idea. 

4. If the material is definitely arranged for silent-read- 
ing work with suitable questions printed before or after 
each section, or if the teacher's list of prepared questions 
is put on the board, the class may be asked to read the 



232 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

questions for themselves as well as to read for the answer. 
This method has obvious advantages. It makes it abso- 
lutely necessary that the questions be prepared before- 
hand, and it makes the exercise more purely a reading drill. 

5. A list of questions covering a certain topic or a cer- 
tain portion of the text may be put on the board, and the 
pupils may be given a limited amount of time in which to 
find and write out as many answers as possible at their 
seats. Such seat work is much more valuable than merely 
giving them a book to read at their seats with no time 
limit and no definite object in view. 

Right here let me call attention to the fact that the lists 
of " map questions " in geographies, especially in the older 
geographies, furnish an excellent type of silent-reading 
material either for class drill or seat work. In fact, almost 
any sort of textbook containing lists of good questions 
based on the text will afford good material. 

These are a few of the v/ays in which we have varied the 
silent-reading work in our schools. Other, and perhaps 
better, ways will doubtless occur to 'others v/orking along 
the same lines. Very few of the individual ideas incor- 
porated herein are original with us. Most of them have 
been used or suggested by other writers. We can claim 
only the credit of having gleaned them and put them to 
work extensively and systematically to further our aims. 

Any one of the methods listed above possesses this 
tremendous advantage over oral-reading class drill. Each 
individual pupil gets much more reading practice. In 
oral reading, only one pupil can read at a time, but in 
silent-reading drill when one pupil is reading they are all 
reading, and reading intensively with their attention con- 
centrated on their work. Hence, if there are ten pupils 
in the class, each pupil gets ten times as much reading 
practice. If there are twenty pupils in the class, each one 



READING IN THE UPPER GRADES 233 

gets twenty times as much practice, and so on. And it is 
practice — especially practice with effort — that develops 
real reading ability. 

If any one believes that such changes in methods and 
materials as I have advocated herein will result in work 
that is dull and uninteresting to the child, he needs only to 
try them or to observe them in operation. He will then be 
convinced of the contrary, unless his mind is so hardened 
by prejudice that he can see no good in any new thing. 



CHAPTER XIV 

TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 

The title of this chapter may cause one to speculate as to 
the connection between standardized tests and teaching 
children how to study. The line of thought runs some- 
thing like this: the tests measure the results of study; 
results of study depend on efficiency of study; efficiency of 
study depends on the child's study habits as certainly as 
on his natural ability; and good study habits can be formed 
economically only by special training in the art of study. 
Hence helping children to improve their study habits is an 
important part of a systematic testing program designed 
to increase the efficiency of the schools. 

Children do not Know How to Study 

If there is any one point upon which everybody engaged 
in educational work can agree unanimously and unhesi- 
tatingly, it is that young people do not know how to study 
and that most of them do not learn how to study. Well, 
why should they know how to study or learn how to study? 
The ability to study efficiently is an acquired art. It can 
be acquired only through the practice of correct methods, 
and none too easily at that. Children are not born with 
the ability to study and usually no one seems to take any 
very effectual pains to teach them. 

And yet, the child's chief occupation for five or six hours 
per day, five days per week, thirty or forty weeks per year, 
for from eight to sixteen years, is supposed to be study. 
Hundreds of thousands of men and women, at a cost of 
hundreds of millions of dollars per year, are supposed to 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 235 

be directing the study of the Nation's children. They 
assign lessons, order the children to study them, and have 
the children recite them. Still we hear the cry from 
teachers all along the line in tones of despair: " Children 
do not know how to study! Children do not learn how to 
study! If children could but study efi&ciently, the teach- 
er's life might be worth living! " 

But what are teachers doing to help make their lives 
more worth living? How many of them are making any 
systematic, persistent efforts to help their pupils learn how 
to study to the best advantage? All too often the teachers 
themselves do not know how to study efficiently. Some of 
them, as I know from annoying experience, cannot even 
read well enough to translate accurately into action simple 
printed directions, such as those accompanying standard- 
ized tests. If the teachers do not know how to study, they 
cannot, of course, expect or be expected to have much 
success in trying to teach children the art of study. 

Children must be Taught to Study 

Nevertheless, if children are to study efficiently, they 
must be taught, or rather helped to learn, to study. 
There is no more reason to expect a child to become expert 
in the art of study without special training and directed 
practice than there is to expect a man to become an expert 
biologist or surgeon without special training. The fact 
that some few of superior mentality who go on through 
high school or college become good students because of 
special aptitude and much practice is no argument that 
most pupils ought to be able to do likewise. The musical 
genius, without special training, can improvise delightful 
music; but most people need special training to make their 
musical efforts worth hearing. Measured by the amount 
of worth-while results obtained, assigning a lesson to the 



236 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

average child with orders to learn it is about on a par with 
giving a person untrained in music a sheet of music with 
orders to play it. The results are usually discouraging. 

Poor Methods Prevail 

Poorly assigned lessons and the customary type of recita- 
tion have done much to encourage wrong methods, or 
rather wrong ideas, of study. Almost universally to the 
child, and only too often to the teacher, studying and 
memorizing have become s5mon3mious terms. The child, 
assigned the next five pages in history, and knowing from 
experience that he will be thoroughly questioned to test 
his remembrance of the details of the lesson or called upon 
to recite from a topic, knows no other resource than to 
memorize as many items as possible, or to memorize as 
much of the text verbatim as possible. Quite as often as 
not the teacher's questions cover so indiscriminately both 
important facts and inconsequential details that the child 
does not dare to neglect any detail even though he himself 
may have some decided ideas, and good ones too, as to 
what are the essential points in the lesson. The memo- 
rizing of facts to be repeated in class, or to be elicited in 
answer to suggestive questions on the part of the teacher, 
seems to be the dominant feature of so-called *' study '' in 
most schools. 

Many teachers, realizing the need for training children 
to study, have made serious attempts to meet the need. 
Some of them have succeeded in a measure, but more of 
them have failed through not attacking the problem from 
the proper angle. In many cases the teachers who failed 
were fairly good students themselves and were reasonably 
acquainted with the psychological principles involved in 
efficient study. They took particular pains to provide an 
environment as favorable as possible to study. They told 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 237 

their pupils to be interested in what they were studying, 
to concentrate their attention, to think about what they 
were reading, to study the relations of facts given in the 
book, and to associate the new knowledge with what they 
had learned before. All of this is perfectly sound advice 
and strictly to the point, but it is for the most part so 
much Greek to the children; and it would be difficult for 
them to profit by it through their own unaided efforts even 
if they could be made to understand it. 

What is the use of telling a child to interest himself in 
something entirely foreign to his natural inclinations 
when we as adults know perfectly well how practically 
impossible it is to force a real interest in anything that 
does not appeal to us? Of what use is it to tell a child that 
he must keep his attention absolutely fixed on what he is 
reading at his seat, whether he is interested in it or not, 
when he has such varied interests of his own outside of 
school toward which his mind naturally tends to wander ? 
Of what advantage is it to tell him to think about what he 
is reading when he has been given no definite problem to 
think about? What does the child know about making 
deliberate mental associations for the purpose of accumu- 
lating a store of organized knowledge? So, although the 
advice is good, it simply does n't " take." The teacher 
soon becomes discouraged and gives up trying, convinced 
that the children cannot be taught to study effectively. 

And she is right in her conviction. They cannot be 
taught how to study in the sense of being told or shown 
how. But they can be helped to learn to study. A child in 
the elementary school has no apperceptive basis that will 
enable him to understand or appreciate the importance of 
interest, attention, thinking, association, etc., in their 
relation to effective study, and he has not ordinarily the 
mental stamina of the superior adult to enable him to 



238 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

apply them persistently of his own volition even if he were 
capable of understanding them. 

Something more is needed than merely telling a child 
how to study. He must be given assignments with very 
definite problems to work out and then be made to study 
these assignments under conditions that will force uncon- 
scious practice of the rules of effective study until proper 
methods of study become habitual. In other words, the 
child must be forced to study correctly if he is to learn to 
study through practice; and he must learn through prac- 
tice if he is to learn at all. But he will never learn to do 
the thing correctly by practicing it incorrectly and the 
latter is what most pupils are doing every day in our 
public schools. The brighter ones who attend school long 
enough eventually to learn to study with some degree of 
efficiency acquire their proficiency through the uneconomi- 
cal process of trial and error by means of which unsuccess- 
ful methods of study are recognized in time and dropped 
while more successful ones are slowly acquired. 

Situations which Favor Good Study Habits must be 

Provided 

Thus the child must be helped to learn how to study by 
being led to study properly. At the same time he is 
generally incapable of understanding and consciously 
appl3dng persistently the psychological principles under- 
lying proper methods of study. Hence I say that the child 
must be obliged to apply these principles, not, of course, 
by the use of physical force, but through providing study 
conditions that will compel him to apply them unwittingly. 
This can be done without the principles being men- 
tioned as such or being discussed in any way. If the child 
has no immediate interest in the subject-matter to be 
Studied, then the learning process itself must be made 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 239 

interesting, or else the subject-matter must be made worth 
while from the child's point of view by connecting it up 
definitely with some problem in which he is vitally inter- 
ested. Concentration must be secured largely through 
furnishing frequent objects or goals during the study 
period. The habit of looking for fact relationships must 
be developed by thought questions which will compel the 
child to draw inferences from a collection of facts given in 
the text, and by supervised outline construction. The 
organization of knowledge through mental associations 
must be forced upon the child through actual practice in 
grouping ideas around a central thought and by obliging 
him to recall previous knowledge and experience in con- 
nection with every important idea in the lesson. All this 
is possible of achievement as soon as the child has acquired 
independent reading ability, but it cannot be accomplished 
through ordinary methods of assignment, study, and reci- 
tation. 

Good Silent-Reading Ability Essential to Study 

Elsewhere in this volume it has been stated that effi- 
cient study is efficient silent reading. This is entirely 
true only if we conceive of efficient silent reading as imply- 
ing not only thorough comprehension of words and sen- 
tences, but also the weighing of thoughts, the evaluation 
of facts, the classification of new ideas presented by the 
text, and their association with previously accumulated 
knowledge. If efficient silent reading is held to be merely 
the comprehension of the author's thoughts as expressed 
in the text, then the statement needs to be modified some- 
what. But even with this less inclusive conception of 
what constitutes efficient silent reading, it cannot be de- 
nied that good silent-reading ability is the basis of all 
efficient study from books. Rapid silent reading with 



240 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

comprehension is the most fundamental factor in efficient 
study. The child cannot be greatly interested in words 
and sentences that he does not understand. He cannot 
concentrate with profit on material that has little or no 
meaning for him. He cannot study the relationships be- 
tween ideas unless those ideas are comprehended. It is 
past dispute that a child must know how to read v/ell 
before he can study well; and he must know how to study 
before he can produce better results to be measured by 
standardized tests. Herein lies the connection between 
this chapter and all that goes before. 

Good Silent-Reading Methods Encourage Good 
Study Habits 

In addition to the fact that good silent-reading ability is 
essential to effective study, I submit that properly directed 
silent-reading drills furnish the most practical means 
available for developing good study habits in children 
through actual practice in the factors of efficient study, 
namely, interest, attention, thinking, and the correlation 
and association of ideas. I have said that children must 
be forced to practice these things by means of study con- 
ditions that will compel such practice. Silent-reading 
drill furnishes the medium through which the forcing can 
be accomplished. The mental processes involved in 
effective drill of this sort are almost exactly the same as in 
efficient study. 

The t3^es of silent-reading class drill heretofore de- 
scribed have, with us, proved very effective in holding the 
child's interest and forcing concentration of attention on 
the matter being read. Probably more often than other- 
wise in the content subjects the children have little inter- 
est in the subject-matter itself. But they do thoroughly 
enjoy lively silent-reading class drill. Their interest is 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 241 

mostly in the immediate objects to be achieved, namely, 
to see who can read the paragraph or page in the shortest 
time and understand it well enough to give the principal 
facts of the assignment from memory and in a connected 
manner; to see who can be the first to discover, from among 
the details of the text, the answer to a definite question; 
or to see who can first discover the main thought of a 
paragraph. The chief interest is in the spirit of lively 
competition engendered by these drills; but, nevertheless, 
the interested, active, enthusiastic cooperation of the 
pupils is secured under conditions that make for real im- 
provement in ability to study. 

It is hard for any one who has never tried these methods 
to realize the degree to which they force children to con- 
centrate their attention on the work in hand. With the 
timed-section method it is manifestly impossible for the 
pupil to reproduce completely and coherently the main 
thoughts of the section read unless he has read it atten- 
tively; and, since no one but the teacher knows who is 
going to be called upon to recite after the reading, every 
member of the class must read attentively. With the 
question method, even though most of the questions are 
answered directly in the text, the child must read atten- 
tively and understandingly if he is not to miss the answers 
when he comes to them. If the answer to a question is 
merely suggested by a fact mentioned in the text, so much 
greater is the demand on the attention of the reader and 
real thinking is introduced as an element in the reading. 
If the answer to a question must be inferred from several 
related facts given in the text, then the highest type of 
reading ability is demanded in that the child must not 
only concentrate his attention on what he is reading, but 
he must do real thinking in associating various ideas with 
each other in their proper relations and with the main 



242 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

idea expressed in the question. Furthermore, he must 
hold the main thought in mind all the time he is doing the 
reading in order not to miss pertinent facts expressed in 
the text. 

Some Examples 

Let me illustrate some of these points. Here is a section 
the answers to which can be taken directly from the text. 

The sugar maple, otherwise known as the hard maple, is one 
of the very best of our shade trees. It is well shaped, affords 
dense shade during summer, and in autumn becomes beautiful 
because of the rich and varied colors of its foliage. In the 
spring its blossoms unfold with the leaves. It grows more 
slowly than the soft maples, but it requires less moisture and is 
more useful and durable. 

Questions : 

1. Why is the sugar maple a beautiful tree in autumn? 

2. Which comes first, the blossoms or the leaves? 

3. Which grows faster, the hard or soft maple? 

These three questions are given in order of difficulty, 
or of their thought-producing power. The first answer 
can be taken directly from the text; " because of the rich 
and varied colors of its foliage." The second question 
requires understanding of the fact that, in the sugar maple, 
the leaves and flowers appear at the same time. The third 
one goes a step farther and requires that the pronoun " it " 
be associated with the maple tree, its antecedent, and that 
the terms " sugar maple " and " hard maple " be asso- 
ciated in the mind as representing the same thing. 

Here is another paragraph with a question that requires 
still more thought on the part of the reader. 

Maple sugar, like that made from sugar cane, is darker than 
ordinary brown sugar, unless the impurities are removed. To 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 243 

do this, milk or beaten eggs are stirred into the boiling sap. 
This causes most of the coloring matter to rise to the top and 
mingle with the froth, which is then skimmed off. Those who 
live near sugar bushes enjoy making and eating maple wax. 
This is formed by letting the hot sirup fall on snow or ice. 
Question: How may light-colored maple sugar be obtained? 

It is evident that finding the correct answer to this 
question necessitates some real thinking and association 
of ideas on the part of the pupil. He must connect up the 
ideas that maple sugar is ordinarily dark in color, that the 
dark color is due to colored impurities, and that these im- 
purities can be gotten rid of in a certain way. 

The following paragraph and questions demand even 
greater concentration and still more extensive thinking on 
the part of the pupil if he is to answer them correctly. 

The leaves are the food-making organs of the plant, and the 
sugar that is made from maple sap in the spring was made 
the summer before by the leaves of the tree. As the sugar 
is manufactured it passes down from the leaves into the 
trunk and roots of the tree, and is stored in the living cells of 
these parts in the form of starch. Then when food is needed 
in the spring to enable the buds to grow and expand into 
blossoms and leaves, and to produce the seeds, the starch is 
changed back to sugar, which is dissolved out of the storage 
cells and carried upward in the sap. 

Questions: Is there much sugar in the roots of the maple tree 
in winter? Why? 

All the data required for inferring a correct answer to 
these questions are given in the paragraph. But in order 
to obtain the correct answer, the reader must comprehend 
several facts in their proper relation, namely, that during 
the summer the leaves of the maple tree manufacture more 
food in the form of sugar than is needed by the tree for 
immediate use; that this surplus food is carried to the 



244 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

roots where it is stored for use the following spring; and 
that the soluble sugar is changed to insoluble starch as it 
is stored in the living cells of the roots, remaining there as 
starch until the following spring when the sap begins to 
rise. Hence in winter there is little if any sugar in the 
roots of the tree. The understanding and correlating of 
these facts so that the correct answer may be inferred calls 
for much practice in real thinking. 

Habits thus Developed Carry over into Other 

Work 

In this way good silent-reading drill compels practice in 
proper methods of study. Such practice tends to develop 
good study habits which may logically be expected to 
carry over into such a closely related activity as seat 
study. That they do carry over, and thus improve the 
pupil's abihty to study by himself even poorly assigned 
lessons in the content subjects, is evidenced by the num- 
ber of teachers who have spoken to me regarding the 
greatly improved study ability of the majority of the 
children after one or two years of intensive drills of the 
type described in the chapters on silent reading. Other 
proof lies in the fact that the pupils' test scores in the 
content subjects, very low in the lirst tests, are increasing 
at much more than the normal rate, while, at the same 
time, no extra time or special drills have been given in 
these subjects other than connecting them up with the 
silent-reading word. Other types of silent-reading drill, 
to be described hereafter, serve to stimulate still more 
strongly the higher thought processes and are thus still 
more conducive to the development of good study habits. 

Study should also be Directed or Supervised 

A fair proportion of school time devoted to silent-reading 
class drills, in which the teacher employs the methods and 



TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 245 

kinds of material used in the better schools of this district, 
and described and illustrated in the two preceding chap- 
ters, together with properly assigned lessons in the con- 
tent subjects, will do much toward solving the problem of 
helping children to learn to study to good advantage. 
But such procedure does not include all that can be done 
to improve study habits of children or to economize study 
time. In order to get the best results possible, the forced 
practice in proper methods of study must be on the actual 
lessons assigned on the content subjects. 

Furthermore, if we are to make sure that the conditions 
under which the studying is done are those most conducive 
to economy of time in learning, and the development of 
good study habits in the children, the study must be di- 
rected. This brings us to my next topic, namely, " Super- 
vised Study." Because of the obviously close relation 
between proper supervised study and " teaching how to 
study," several important things that might be included 
in this chapter are reserved for fuller discussion in the next. 



CHAPTER XV 
SUPERVISED STUDY 

Possibly the greatest source of waste in the public-school 
system is the time supposed to be spent by the pupils at 
their seats or at home in trying to " study " their lessons, 
by their own unaided efforts. Not infrequently half the 
pupil's school time is spent in " studying " from books to 
prepare for the recitations. 

Three Types of Activity in " Studying " 

Some pupils dehberately idle away their study time be- 
cause they have no interest whatever in the school or its 
work. Compelled by law to attend until they are fourteen, 
or sixteen, or eighteen, as the case may be, they are sullen 
and obstinate and plan only to kill time until they are old 
enough to leave school. They are usually of inferior 
mental ability and the source of most of the serious dis- 
ciplinary problems. Quite often their attitude toward the 
school is the result of retardation and consequent dis- 
couragement due to the narrowness of a program of school 
activities which provides no suitable and interesting work 
for the moron type. 

Many other pupils read over their lessons in a dilatory, 
ineffective manner with their minds constantly wandering 
to more inviting fields of thought in their own sphere of 
interests. This is largely because the lessons as assigned 
present no definite problems in which they are interested. 
This group usually contains bright and energetic boys and 
girls who need only to have their school work enlivened 
and their tasks made definite in order to become inter- 



SUPERVISED STUDY 247 

ested and enthusiastic workers. There are still others 
who do not waste their time in idleness and day-dreaming, 
but who are busy every minute of their study time. Yet 
the time and energy even of these pupils are largely 
wasted because of ineffective methods of study and ill- 
directed efforts. They are industrious, and of good 
mentality; and they would really like to study if they but 
knew how. As it is they merely do the best they can under 
unfavorable circumstances. 

Difficulties in Connection with Supervised Study 

A GROWING realization among educators of the tremen- 
dous waste connected with undirected study has led to 
the development within recent years of various plans 
for supervised study in the more progressive school sys- 
tems. The idea of supervised study is good, and it 
promises much in the way of increased efficiency when it 
is properly carried out; but, as supervised study is ordi- 
narily conceived, the practical difficulties in the way of its 
general adoption are prohibitive in the smaller school sys- 
tems and particularly in the one-teacher rural schools. 
The main difficulty is for the teacher to find the time both 
to conduct the recitations and to supervise the study 
periods. The ideal solution, as it is most generally advo- 
cated, is to have two teachers in each room, one to conduct 
the recitations, and the other to supervise the study of the 
children at their seats. This would necessitate a doubling 
of the teaching force that would be financially out of the 
question in most, if not all, school systems. 

Personally I doubt whether this solution would be ideal, 
even if it were financially practicable. The teacher who 
supervised the seat study could do little more than see that 
every child kept busy at his lessons and assist individuals 
over difficulties. Often her efforts would be duplicated by 



248 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

having to assist several different pupils over the same 
difficulty separately. Any attempt to explain or illustrate 
difficult points to the class as a whole would be apt to 
interfere with the recitation supposedly going on at the 
same time in the same room. Of course, keeping the 
children busy and giving individual assistance to the slower 
pupils would undoubtedly be beneficial; but the benefits to 
be derived from such practice would scarcely justify the 
great additional expense involved. 

In school systems where each teacher has to teach only 
one undivided grade or one division of a grade, the problem 
of introducing supervised study may be solved with com- 
parative ease and with no additional expense. Under 
such circumstances the teacher is, for the most part, free 
during the study periods to direct the studies of the pupils 
as may seem advisable. But here again, if her efforts are 
limited to keeping the children busy and to assisting indi- 
vidual pupils, the full possibilities of the study period are 
far from being realized. What is needed is directed class 
study so organized as to develop in the pupils methods of 
attack that will constantly improve their ability to do inde- 
pendent work. Merely keeping them busy and assisting 
them over the rough places will not do this. 

Another device, and a more practical one, is the divided 
period, one part of the period being devoted to supervised 
study, and the other to the recitation. The recitation may 
follow the study immediately, or the last half of the period 
may be given over to study in preparation for the next 
day's recitation so as to give the pupils a chance to do 
further study outside of class if they so wish. But even 
this scheme is available only in high schools where the 
periods are long, or in schools where the teacher has only 
one or two grades so that the class period and the study 
period for each subject can be combined into one fairly 



SUPERVISED STUDY 249 

long period. In the smaller school systems, where most or 
all of the teachers have charge of from four to eight grades, 
the time of the teacher is necessarily all taken up with 
recitations and the class periods are so short that division 
of them is not feasible. In each of these class periods 
there is little more than time for a hasty testing of the 
pupil's preparation of the lesson and for the assignment of 
the new lesson. 

Another difficulty lies in the fact that so-called super- 
vised study, in the hands of teachers who do not rightly 
understand its purposes and possibilities, or who do not 
care to put themselves to any more trouble than is neces- 
sary to enable them to draw so much per week in salary, 
may degenerate into a procedure more harmful than bene- 
ficial. The chief features of such a procedure have been 
mentioned above, namely, keeping the children busy and 
giving a certain type of assistance to individuals. Keep- 
ing the children busy at their lessons probably can do no 
harm, but the wrong kind of assistance can do much harm. 
It is quite possible for the direction and help offered by the 
teacher to tend to make the child dependent and utterly 
unable to do a piece of work for himself. In other words, 
the teacher may make herself a crutch rather than a guide. 

The result of this kind of assistance is that children do 
not learn to work independently. Hence their inability 
in the upper grades, in high school, and even in college to 
use their study time to good advantage. The giving of 
assistance at the right time, in the right way, and in proper 
amount demands a type of judgment based on a sense of 
values that is all too rare in teachers. If supervised study 
is to be nothing more than giving undiscriminating as- 
sistance to individual pupils in specific difficulties — and 
with an unskillful, or careless teacher, it is apt to be little 
more — we shall probably do better without it. 



250 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Supervised study is closely connected with teachinj 
children how to study in that it furnishes the best oppor 
tunity for such teaching. Teaching how to study doe 
not involve a systematic course in psychology. It con 
sists in guiding pupils in the actual practice of the art 
giving them sufficient directed practice in it to make cei 
tain reactions habitual, and then making them consciou 
of the best methods of study by calling attention to th 
elements in their study experience that have meant de 
cided success or failure. Any supervised-study plan tha 
does not result in constantly increasing the ability of th 
pupils to do independent work is largely a failure. Her 
as often the correct point of view is that a teacher's chie 
aim should be to make herself as unnecessary to her charge 
as possible and as soon as possible. Hence we must hel 
children to learn how to study in connection with thei 
actual studying. In order to do this effectively thei 
study must be properly directed, or supervised. 

Silent-Reading Drill Offers an Opportunity for 
Supervised Study 

Now, I do not propose to submit any complete plan fc 
supervised study that is applicable under any or all cond 
tions. I do not hope to offer a complete solution to 
problem that has long been puzzling the minds of muc 
abler men. But I do hope to offer some suggestions the 
will prove helpful in attempting to solve the problem i 
actual practice. With this in view I am about to descrit 
some procedures now in vogue in the best schools of m 
district which appear to help materially along these line; 
These practices may or may not be correctly terme 
" supervised study," but since from them seem to be d< 
rived most of the benefits generally ascribed to supervise 
study, they may well serve as substitutes for the latte 



SUPERVISED STUDY 251 

whatever they may be called. They have two advantages 
at least: (i) they are applicable so far as I can see in any 
school or school system however small, and (2) some of 
them can be handled with profit by any teacher with 
average intelhgence and teaching ability who is willing to 
give them an honest trial. 

I have mentioned in a former chapter how, in our zeal to 
increase the reading ability of the pupils quickly as the first 
step in increasing the efficiency of the schools, we decided 
to amphfy the time devoted to reading drill by taking 
up some of the content subjects, notably physiology and 
hygiene, and civics, by the silent-reading methods hereto- 
fore described. This was by way of experiment and was 
undertaken at first with considerable misgivings, especially 
on the part of the teachers. It was feared that the children 
would not " get " the subjects if they were not studied at 
their seats and recited in the orthodox fashion. 

In order to test the efficacy of these methods in fixing 
the principal facts of the subject-matter in the minds of 
the pupils, weekly oral or written quizzes were given to- 
gether with monthly reviews for which the children pre- 
pared by reading over at their seats the ground covered by 
reading and discussion in class during the month. The 
results were highly gratifying from the first and soon re- 
moved all doubts as to the effectiveness of the procedure. 
And, from the psychological viewpoint, why should it not 
be effective? The strict concentration of attention com- 
pelled by these silent-reading drills is much more favorable 
to retention of subject-matter than is the usual perfunc- 
tory reading at seat in so-called study. Moreover, the 
reproduction of the principal thoughts and the class dis- 
cussion of important points help the pupils to discriminate, 
consciously or otherwise, regarding the things they ought 
to remember. 



252 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

In fact, so effective did this method prove in producin 
results and improving learning ability that, by the middl 
of the first year, several of the best teachers of the distric 
were taking up much of the regular geography and histor 
work as silent-reading class drill supplemented by frequen 
quizzes by way of review. As explained before, practicall; 
all of the supplementary historical and geographical read 
ing was taken up in this way in the regular reading classes 
After giving the tests several times and noting th 
progress made by the pupils in the content subjects ii 
schools using this method, it occurred to me that thes 
silent-reading class drills were proving themselves to b 
really efficient forms of supervised study. It also seemei 
clear that with supervised study definitely in view th 
exercises could be so improved as to develop in the childre: 
the ability to think and to organize the facts gleaned fror 
their reading, thus improving still more rapidly thei 
ability to study independently. In short, proper! 
planned silent-reading drills gave promise not only of di 
veloping the ability to read rapidly and comprehendingl 
(which is the very foundation of study ability), but also c 
stimulating the higher thought processes and of givin 
actual practice in the art of efficient study. 

This idea was presented to the teachers and I found th£ 
the same thought had occurred to some of them as a resu 
of their experience with the silent-reading work. Sever; 
of them made excellent suggestions and offered to coope 
ate in developing the idea. It is some of the process( 
evolved from this beginning that I am about to describe. 
The simplest form of silent-reading class drill that ca 
be said to have much real value is the timed-section methc 
which has already been explained in detail. This was tl 
method we used first in all the silent-reading work, 
forces concentration of attention and helps greatly in tl 



SUPERVISED STUDY 253 

accumulation of factual knowledge; but it does not compel 
much thinking or organization of ideas, and hence is not 
specially valuable as a means of putting supervised study 
into effect. Class discussions of the important points in 
the lessons in their relations to the main topics will, how- 
ever, help to overcome this, defect. 

The Question Method is Especially Advantageous 

Although the timed-section method has some advantages 
peculiarly its own and is still much used in reading supple- 
mentary material in story form, in the better schools it was 
soon superseded for supervised study purposes by the 
question method also described in a former chapter. It 
remains in general use only by the weaker and less inter- 
ested teachers of the district. Indeed, it appears to be the 
only method of silent-reading popular or practicable with 
that class of teachers since it demands less extra work and 
less skill in handling. With the question m^ethod, however, 
the questions can be so selected as to call attention to the 
main points in a lesson and their relations to each other 
and to the main topic. The pupils may thus be led in 
spite of themselves to do some real thinking in addition to 
having the principal facts fixed in their minds and getting 
the best kind of reading practice. 

Let us see how content material can be handled by the 
question method of silent-reading drill so as to get reading 
practice, information, and practice in the art of study at 
the same time. Suppose that the topic to be studied is 
" The Birch Tree," in Moseley's Trees, Stars, and Birds, 
and that the text assignment is chapter iv, entitled 
*^ Birches." The teacher should prepare beforehand a 
list of questions covering the main points in the lesson. 
A good share of them should be real thought questions to 
which the answers can be inferred only by reading so as to 



254 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

grasp the relationship among the facts given in the text. 
Most of them should be formed so that they cannot be 
answered by words or phrases taken directly from the 
book and without association of ideas by the reader. Of 
course, when the object is merely to call the attention of 
the class to some detail whose significance is derived from 
its bearing upon some thought question to be asked later, 
a question answered directly by the text is permissible. 
It would be advisable at first for the teacher inexperienced 
in the use of this method to make an outline of each topic 
to be studied and then to frame her questions to cover all 
the subtopics in the outline. 

The Method Illustrated 

The following selection is a part of the chapter under con- 
sideration divided into sections for silent-reading drill and 
with suitable questions following each section. 

BIRCHES 

Section I 

Because of their grace and beauty birches are a favorite 
subject for landscape artists and photographers, and they are 
frequently planted in parks and on lawns. The white and the 
paper birch are the species of birch most frequently planted for 
ornamental purposes. They are especially effective when 
placed among evergreens, because of the contrast in colors. 
Many of the white birches have slender, drooping branchlets 
with deeply cut leaves that might be taken for those of some 
varieties of maples. White birch grows wild in Europe and 
Canada and to some extent in our Northern States, but with 
us the paper birch is more common. Where a forest of spruce 
or of certain species of pine — as white pine — has been burned, 
paper birch and aspens spring up. In the abundant sunlight 

1 From Moseley's Trees, Stars, and Birds. Copyright, 1919, by World Book 
Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York. 



SUPERVISED STUDY 255 

of the open spaces these trees grow more rapidly than seedhngs 
of the spruce or pine, and a forest of birch and aspen grows up 
in place of the evergreen forest. 

Questions: 

1. Why are birches so frequently planted? 

2. What are the two favorite birches for ornamental pur- 
poses? 

3. Why are they often planted among evergreens? 

4. Where does white birch grow wild? 

5. Which is the more common in the United States, the white 
birch or the paper birch? 

6. When a forest of spruce or white pine is burned what 
kinds of trees grow up to take their place? 

7. Which grows more rapidly, birches or pines? 

Section II 

The yellow birch has yellowish or silvery-gray bark which 
has an aromatic odor. The bark of the white birch and paper 
birch is creamy or pinkish white and splits into paperlike layers. 
From birch bark the Indians made canoes, as well as boxes, 
buckets, baskets, kettles, and dishes. In making their canoes 
they stitched together large plates of birch bark with the 
fibrous roots of white spruce, coating the seams with resin 
obtained from spruce and pine trees. In parts of northern 
Europe the bark of the white birch is used for shingles. Boats 
made from it are used on the Volga River. From it are made 
birch oil and birch tar. Russia leather has an aromatic odor 
due to the oil of birch bark used in tanning it. As the odor 
repels insects, this leather is valuable for binding books. A 
few such bindings in a bookcase are a safeguard against 
insect enemies, and this oil is said also to protect books from 
mildew. 

Questions: 

1. How could you tell the bark of yellow birch from that of 
white birch if you were blindfolded? 

2. What color is the bark of the paper birch? 



256 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

3. What is said in this section that would indicate the origin 
of the name "paper birch"? 

4. What uses did the Indians make of birch bark? 

5. Describe how the Indians made canoes of birch bark. 

6. What is the bark of the white birch used for in parts of 
northern Europe? 

7. Name four other uses of birch bark in Europe. 

8. Why is Russia leather especially valuable for binding 
books? 

Section III 

The wood of the white birch is used as a fuel for smoking 
hams and herrings, because of the flavor which it imparts. 
Being light colored, soft, and easily worked, it is used for mak- 
ing spoons, ladles, bowls, and fish casks. Spools, wooden 
shoes, ox yokes, chairs, and tables also are made from it. 
Charcoal made from it is burned in forges, and soot made from 
birch fires is used for making printer's ink. The wood of the 
paper birch is used for fuel, shoe pegs, spools and toys. The 
yellow birch and sweet birch yield wood that makes fine fur- 
niture and a good interior finish for houses. It is often stained 
dark red and varnished. It is then said to have a "mahogany 
finish." Few trees are useful for so many purposes as is the 
birch. 

Questions: 

1. Why is white birch wood used as a fuel for smoking meat 
and fish? 

2. Name several things made from white birch wood? 

3. What part does the white birch play in the manufacture 
of printer's ink? 

4. Name some things made from the wood of the paper birch. 

5. What kinds of birch are used for furniture and finishing 
lumber? 

6. It is often finished in imitation of what costly wood? 

7. How does birch wood compare in variety of uses with 
that of other trees? 



SUPERVISED STUDY 257 

Section IV 

Have you ever thought of any connection between the size 
of a tree's leaves and the coarseness or slenderness of its 
branches? Even in winter, birch trees look quite different 
from ash or hickory, not merely in color but in the appearance 
of the branchlets. The function of the branches is to hold the 
leaves up to the light, and the number of branches required 
depends on the size of the leaves. Trees with small leaves, 
like birch, elm, and willow, have very numerous branchlets. 
Those with large leaves, like ash and hickory, do not require 
so many branchlets. The leaves themselves reach out to the 
light and fill up the spaces in the crown of the tree. Most 
palm trees, of which there are a thousand kinds in the tropics, 
do not branch at all, but they have immense leaves with long 
stalks to reach out to the light. 

Questions : 

1. Of what use to a tree are its branches? 

2. Upon what depends the number of branches which a tree 
needs to have? 

3. Why do such trees as the birch and elm need so many 
branchlets? 

4. Which has more branchlets, a hickory or an elm? Why? 

5. Seeing a tree in winter, when it is bare of leaves, how 
could you tell whether its leaves in summer are large or 
small? 

6. Why is it necessary for most palm trees to have very large 
leaves with long stalks? 

Section V 

On the twigs or small branches of a tree look for small oblong 
and elevated places on the bark. These are called lenticels. 
They are breathing pores through which the air can enter 
to reach the living inner portion of the bark and from which 
water vapor escapes. On birch and cherry trees the lenticels 
may be seen not only on the branches but even on the trunks. 
Here they have become elongated by the growth of the bark. 



258 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Lenticels are to be found on all trees. Where the bark is very 
thick, as it is on old oaks, they are at the bottom of deep cracks. 

Questions: 

1. What are lenticels? 

2. Where would you look for them? 

3. What are they for? 

4. What is their shape? 

5. On the trunks of what trees may they be seen? 

6. What trees do not have lenticels? 

7. Why can they not be seen on the trunk of an old elm tree? 

Let us consider the first section in detail with a view to 
discovering how well the questions cover the facts in the 
text. Most of the important ideas in the section are in- 
cluded in the following list: 

1. Birch trees are graceful and beautiful. 

2. They are often planted for ornamental purposes. 

3. The white and paper birches are the favorites for planting 
purposes. 

4. Their white color is particularly beautiful in contrast with 
the evergreens. 

5. The paper birch is the more common of the two species in 
this country. 

6. The destruction of a forest of spruce or white pine by fire 
is followed by a growth of paper birches and aspens. 

7. Birches are fast growing trees. 

Now compare this list with the questions following 
Section I. Are there any ideas in this list that are not 
brought out in the questions? Does the list omit any im- 
portant ideas given in the text? Does the list contain any 
ideas not pertaining to the main topic? Is there any doubt 
but that the reading of these questions one at a time and 
searching out the answers will impress these facts upon the 
child's mind more surely and permanently than would the 
mere reading of the text at seat? If you doubt it, try it. _ 



SUPERVISED STUDY 259 

I met with striking evidence on this point during the 
first year that the method was used in our schools. One 
day in the fall I demonstrated the method in a certain 
school for the benefit of the teacher. The reading mate- 
rial was part of the chapter on Petrograd in Carpenter's 
Europe, for which I had a list of questions prepared. This 
school had a new teacher for the spring term and it became 
necessary to demonstrate again. I had kept the list of 
questions in my notebook for demonstration purposes; 
and I used them again in this same school believing that 
the children had forgotten all about what they had read 
hurriedly and but once several months before. To my 
surprise, several of the children scarcely glanced at the 
book as I asked the questions in order, but were ready 
with the answers about as soon as I had finished the ques- 
tions. Fully half of the questions were answered in this 
way. If I ever had any doubt as to whether material read 
in this way would " stick," it disappeared then and there. 

The questions pertaining to Section I are not real 
thought questions. Not every paragraph furnishes data 
upon which to base such questions. This is one that does 
not. However, if the reader will examine the other sec- 
tions in connection with their accompanying questions, he 
will find a number of questions that demand real thinking 
if they are to be answered correctly. In fact, the answers 
to more than half the questions cannot be picked directly 
from a single word or phrase in the text. 

Alternating Supervised Study and Recitation 

With questions prepared beforehand, this amount of text 
can easily be covered in ten minutes. Let us suppose that 
ten minutes is all the time available for this class. At the 
end of the period the pupils are told to be prepared for a 
review of this lesson on the following day. The next day 



26o STANDARDIZED TESTS 

they are called upon to answer the same questions with 
their books closed. Discussion of interesting points is 
encouraged as long as it does not wander too far from the 
main topic. On the third day another topic is taken up 
in the text as on the first day, and on the fourth day this 
topic is reviewed from memory. This process may con- 
tinue for ten days, and at the end of this time a general 
review may be given either as an oral or written quiz. 
The questions for this review are selected from the original 
lists which the teacher keeps in her notebook. 

In this way the reading drill and supervised-study period 
comes on one day and the recitation on the next. If 
twenty minutes are available for the class period (or even 
fifteen if the class is mostly composed of good readers), 
the period may well be divided even though the lessons 
have to be shortened. In this case the first half of the 
period should be devoted to review of the preceding lesson 
(the recitation) and the last half to the reading of a new 
lesson (supervised study). Thus the children may have 
opportunity before the recitation for further study if they 
so desire. Few of them, however, will find further study 
necessary. With the divided period, the general reviews 
may come oftener — say at the end of each week. It is 
not well to have these reviews cover too much ground; and 
it is surprising how much ground can be covered in a week 
with a fifteen or twenty minute divided period. This is 
especially true if the children are fairly good readers to 
begin with, and if they as well as the teacher have become 
accustomed to the method. 

One need have no fear that it will be impossible to cover 
the ground required, if part of the class period, or even 
every alternate period, is devoted to supervised study of 
this kind. Fully as much ground can be covered; and, 
judging from our experience at least, the results will be 



SUPERVISED STUDY 261 

quite equal to or even better than those usually obtained 
by the traditional daily question and answer recitation 
following a period of unsupervised seat study. With only 
fifteen minute periods some of our classes cover three or 
four different texts in one subject in the course of a year, 
thus obtaining a much broader view of the subject than 
they could possibly have if they were confined to the study 
of a single text. 

Another advantage is, that if most of the content sub- 
jects are handled in this way, ordinary seat study in these 
subjects becomes less and less necessary for most of the 
pupils. Accordingly, the tim.e usually spent in seat study 
can be used for extended supplementary reading or in any 
other way that may seem advisable. One way of using 
this time to good advantage is for the teacher to put 
questions on the board covering assignments in textbooks 
and to have the children find the answers and write them. 
Children generally like to do this sort of work. The 
questions give them something definite to work on at their 
seat. This type of work, however, should never be al- 
lowed to supplant the regular silent-reading class drill, 
because it takes no account of the speed element in reading 
nor does it force concentration to anything like the extent 
that class drill does. Some textbooks contain at the end of 
chapters excellent lists of questions which may be used for 
this purpose. Often, however, such hsts of questions are 
not suitable; and the teacher should go over them carefully 
before assigning them for this type of seat work. Judging 
from some of these lists, one would almost think that the 
person who framed the questions had never seen the book. 
After trying a few such lists the pupils are apt to become 
discouraged and lose interest — and one cannot blame 
them. 

I believe that this method of handling silent-reading 



262 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

drill for purposes of supervised study will prove, on the 
whole, to be one of the most useful that can be devised. 
It demands less extra work, and less skill on the part of the 
teacher; and it covers ground more rapidly than most of 
the other methods. At the same time it produces excellent 
results from every point of view. On the one hand, it can 
be used to good advantage by the teacher who is somewhat 
lacking in originality or initiative after she has had it ex- 
plained and seen it demonstrated; but on the other hand 
it furnishes plenty of scope for the abler teacher to display 
whatever skill she may possess. The more skillfully it is 
handled, of course, with full understanding of its purposes 
and possibilities, the more efficient will it prove in develop- 
ing ability to study independently and the better medium 
it will be for practice in the art of study. A great deal 
depends upon the skill and judgment used in framing the 
questions. 

Another Way of Conducting Supervised Study — 
Finding the Topic of a Paragraph 

There are other ways of conducting silent-reading drill, 
however, ways that make greater demands on thinking 
ability and that do more to help pupils acquire the ability 
to grasp relationships among ideas. The ability to or- 
ganize ideas in their proper relations to each other and to 
some central idea or group of ideas is an ability that de- 
velops only through actual practice. Pupils must be led 
to do such organizing if they are to learn through practice. 
These other methods are specially valuable as aids in 
developing organizing ability in pupils; but they consume 
much more time and demand much more skill on the part 
of the teacher if they are to prove successful. Neverthe- 
less, they should be used whenever the requisite time and 
skill are available, for they help to develop in the child an 
ability that is vital to his success as a student. 



SUPERVISED STUDY 263 

One good type of such silent-reading drill for supervised- 
study purposes consists in having children read paragraphs 
from a text which has no paragraph headings or topic 
sentences, then requiring them to suggest suitable head- 
ings or topic sentences for the paragraphs. Get sugges- 
tions from as many different pupils as possible for each 
paragraph and write them all on the board. Then call on 
the class to decide which one is the best and why. If at 
first the children seem at a loss to know what is required 
of them and no suggestions as to suitable paragraph head- 
ings are forthcoming, or if from a number of suggested 
headings no satisfactory decision as to which is the best 
one can be reached, do not tell them and do not be dis- 
couraged, but lead them to analyze the paragraph under 
discussion. Have them consider each sentence or state- 
ment in the paragraph with a view to discovering a com- 
mon or central idea to which each statement or sentence 
refers. 

Let me illustrate. A short article selected at random 
from an encyclopaedia is on Cocoa. Let us proceed to 
analyze the second paragraph which reads as follows: 

The cocoa is a small tropical tree cultivated extensively in 
Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Saint Thomas Island (off the West 
African coast), Ceylon, the West Indies, and Central America. 
Heat, moisture, and a deep rich soil are the conditions which 
favor its growth. The straight, regular trunk usually attains a 
height of twenty feet, and puts forth branches which bear shin- 
ing, oval leaves, dark green above and red underneath. The 
flowers, which have five narrow, bright-red petals, grow directly 
from the trunk or from the older branches, and are almost 
stemless. The fruit, a cucumber-shaped pod with a thick, 
deeply-grooved rind, has the same peculiarity. Each pod con- 
tains many almond-like seeds, covered by a thin, reddish-brown 
shell, and within each of the seeds is a dark brown kernel, the 



204 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

valuable portion of the plant. The seeds have the commercial 
name of cocoa beans, while the kernels are called nuts. 

Sentence i, *^The cocoa is a small tropical tree cultivated 
extensively in Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Saint Thomas 
Island, Ceylon, the West Indies, and Central America." This 
sentence tells us where the cocoa tree is cultivated. 

Sentence 2. "Heat, moisture and a deep rich soil are the 
conditions favorable to its growth." Growth of what? _ The 
cocoa tree. 

Sentence j. "The straight, regular trunk usually attains a 
height of twenty feet, and puts forth branches which bear 
shining, oval leaves, dark green above and red underneath." 
This sentence speaks of trunk, branches, and leaves. Of what? 
The cocoa tree. 

Sentence 4. " The flowers, which have five narrow, bright- 
red petals, grow directly from the trunk or from the older 
branches, and are almost stemless." This sentence tells of the 
flowers and where they grow. Flowers of what? The cocoa 
tree. 

Sentence 5. "The fruit, a cucumber-shaped pod with a thick, 
deeply-grooved rind, has the same peculiarity." This sentence 
described the fruit. Of what? The cocoa tree. 

Sentence 6, "Each pod contains many almond-like seeds, 
covered by a thin, reddish-brown shell, and within each of the 
seeds is a dark brown kernel, the valuable part of the plant." 
This sentence describes the contents of the pod or fruit. Of 
what? The cocoa tree. 

In this way it is made evident to every member of the 
class that each sentence in the paragraph has reference to a 
single central topic, the cocoa tree. The central idea of the 
paragraph, tersely expressed as a topic, is a paragraph 
heading; or, briefly expressed as a complete statement, it 
is a topic sentence. 

This is, of course, slow work for the children at first, but 
it is well worth while. Most of the children will grasp the 
idea by the time five or six paragraphs have been analyzed. 



SUPERVISED STUDY 265 

and after that it is merely a matter of practice. In a sur- 
prisingly short time they will acquire the ability to recog- 
nize the topics of paragraphs merely by reading them 
through carefully and thoughtfully, providing, of course, 
that the material studied is well organized. In selecting 
material for such drill, the teacher should be very careful 
to see that it is well organized, especially at first. We 
have found this type of drill very popular with pupils when 
handled by an intelligent teacher who knows what she is 
trying to do. 

Sometimes in analyzing a paragraph, ideas will be found 
that are quite irrelevant to the general topic. Through 
such analysis the older children at least can be led to 
recognize this irrelevant material, and it is important that 
they should be trained to do so. It is just as important, 
from the viewpoint of developing study ability, for the 
child to learn to recognize data not pertaining to the sub- 
ject under consideration as it is for him to learn to recog- 
nize pertinent material. Hunting for irrelevant state- 
ments in paragraphs might profitably be made a special 
type of silent-reading exercise to be used with reasonable 
frequency in the supervised-study period. 

Construction of Outlines ' 

Probably there is no more effective kind of supervised 
study (or silent-reading drill) than is furnished by the 
construction of lesson outlines in class under the super- 
vision and with the assistance of the teacher — providing, 
however, that the children are led to do the major part of 
the thinking and organizing. Not all material is suitable 
for this kind of work; but whenever such material is found 
in the texts, it should be utilized so far as time will permit. 
The material having been chosen, the first thing to do is 
to select headings for main topics if good ones are not 



266 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

given in the textbook. Sometimes the headings given in 
the books are poorly chosen or not well worded. In such 
cases it is good practice for the class to reconstruct them 
or find better ones. Then each paragraph should be care- 
fully analyzed, the relations between ideas studied, and 
subtopics chosen for groups of related ideas. Finally, the 
minor details should be grouped under the subtopics 
which they support. 

Let us take the before-mentioned article on cocoa to 
illustrate drill in the construction of an outline by means 
of paragraph analysis. Here is the article: 

Cocoa (Ko'-ko) (originally Ko-ko'-a) is a reddish-brown 
powder obtained by grinding the kernels from the seeds of the 
cacao, or cocoa, tree. It is widely used in making the popular 
table beverage known as cocoa. The name, now in general 
use in English-speaking countries, is a corruption of the more 
correct form, cacao. 

The cocoa is a small tropical tree cultivated extensively in 
Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Saint Thomas Island (off the West 
Coast of Africa), Ceylon, the West Indies, and Central America. 
Heat, moisture, and a deep rich soil are the conditions which 
favor its growth. The straight, regular trunk usually attains 
a height of twenty feet, and puts forth branches which bear 
shining, oval leaves, dark green above, and red underneath. 
The flowers, which have five narrow, bright-red petals, grow 
directly from the trunk or the older branches, and are almost 
stemless. The fruit, a cucumber-shaped pod with a thick, 
deeply-grooved rind, has the same peculiarity. Each pod con- 
tains many almond-like seeds, covered by a thin, reddish-brown 
shell, and within each of the seeds is a dark brown kernel, the 
valuable portion of the plant. The seeds have the commercial 
name of cocoa beans, while the kernels are called nibs. 

Most of the work of getting the beans ready for shipment is 
done by negroes. After the pod is picked, a sHt is made in the 
side with a knife; the pods are then broken open with the hand, 



SUPERVISED STUDY 267 

and the beans and their enveloping pulp are scooped out and 
carried to a sweating house to go through a process of fermen- 
tation. This fermentation makes the pulp easily removable, 
and also improves the quality of the kernel. From the sweat- 
ing house the beans are taken to sieves or troughs and stirred 
under water until they are clean and smooth. They are then 
dried, either in the sun or by artificial means. Finally, in 
order that the beans may be protected against molds and 
fungous growths, they are finished, or polished. On some 
plantations the polishing is done by coolies, who dance upon 
the seeds until every particle of pulp is removed, and the 
finished product shines. The beans are then placed in bags 
or barrels and shipped to the different ports of the world, to be 
sold to manufacturers. 

Powdered cocoa, chocolate, and cocoa butter are the chief 
products of the cocoa beans. In the process of manufacture 
the seeds are roasted, and the shells removed, and the kernels, 
or nibs, are placed in a grinding mill with steam-heated rollers. 
Because of the heat in the rollers the cocoa mass flows out of 
the mill in the form of a semi -liquid, dark brown paste and can 
be run into deep pans and allowed to harden. If cocoa is to 
be made, the mass is remelted and placed in a great press 
which extracts a large proportion of the fat. The substance is 
then taken from the press and reduced to a fine powder in a 
mill consisting of a pair of rollers armed with teeth. Before it 
is placed on the market the powder is pulverized in a second 
mill, then is subjected to a thorough sifting. Chocolate is the 
cocoa mass with the fat left in. If sugar and flavoring are 
added, the product becomes sweet chocolate. The fat extracted 
from the cocoa is sold under the name of cocoa butter, and is 
used as a basis for creams and pomades for the hair and skin and 
in candy making. The shells of the cocoa beans, usually 
regarded as a waste product, are sometimes roasted with coffee 
to add to its flavor, and in some sections peasants use them as 
a substitute for tea and coffee. 



268 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

Now let us examine each sentence in each paragraph 
and note briefly what it tells us. 

Paragraph I 

1. What cocoa is and how it is obtained. 

2. Its use as a beverage. 

3. Derivation of word "cocoa." 

Paragraph II 

1. The tree and where it is cultivated. 

2. Conditions favoring growth. 

' 3. Shape of trunk and shape and color of leaves. 

4. Flowers and where they grow. 

5. Description of fruit. , 

6. Contents of pods. 

7. Commercial names of seeds and kernels. 

Paragraph III 

1. Negroes do most of the work, 

2. Getting beans from pods. 

3. The sweating house and its purpose. 

4. Removal of pulp. 

5. Cleaning the beans. 

6. Drying the beans. 

7. Polishing the beans. Why? 

8. How polishing is done. 

9. Shipment of beans to manufacturers. 

Paragraph IV 

1. Things made from cocoa beans. 

2. Things done to the seeds. 

3. Product of grinding. 

4. Extraction of oil to make cocoa. 

5. Grinding of residue to make cocoa. 

6. Second pulverizing and sifting. 

7. Chocolate. 

8. Sweet chocolate. 

9. Cocoa butter and its uses. 
10. Use of shells. 



SUPERVISED STUDY ^ 269 

Now, with the results of our analysis and the minor 
details of the paragraphs, we can easily construct our out- 
line as follows: 

COCOA 



I. Cocoa 


I. 


What it is 


2. 


How obtained 


3- 


Use 


4. 


Derivation of name 


II. The Cocoa Tree 


I. 


Where it is cultivated 


2. 


Conditions favoring growth 




(a) Heat 




(b) Moisture 




(c) Soil 


3. 


Appearance 




(a) Shape of trunk 




(b) Leaves 




A. Shape 




B. Color 


4. 


Flowers 




(a) Color 




(b) Position on tree 


5. 


Fruit 




(a) Appearance 




(b) Contents 




A. Commercial names of 



HI. Preparing Cocoa Beans for Shipment 

1. Kind of labor employed 

2. Getting beans from pods 

(a) How accomplished 

3. Removal of pulp 

(a) Where? 

(b) How? 

4. Cleaning the beans 

5. Drying 



270 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

6. Polishing 

(a) Purpose 

(b) How accomplished 

7. Shipment 

IV. Manufacture of Cocoa Products 

1. Chief products 

2. Process of manufacture 

(a) Roasting 

(b) Shelling 

(c) Grinding of kernels 

A. Method 

B. Product 

3. Making cocoa 

(a) Extraction of oil 

(b) Grinding of residue 

(c) Second grinding 

(d) Sifting 

4. Chocolate 

(a) What it is 

(b) Sweet chocolate 

5. Cocoa butter 

(a) What it is 

(b) Its uses 

6. Use of shells 

Two or three such outlines worked out in class each 
term and supplemented by as much seat work along the 
same lines as may seem practicable will help tremendously 
in developing the ability to select the main points in a 
lesson and group the minor details about them. Only by 
such practice can most pupils learn to recognize and grasp 
the salient points in what ordinarily appears to them as a 
dead level of facts to be memorized without discrimination. 
When the material is so well organized by the author that 
most of the main thoughts are emphasized by topic sen- 
tences and other general statements, the outlining is com- 



SUPERVISED STUDY 271 

paratively simple. Such material, however, is the excep- 
tion rather than the rule. Nevertheless, it should be used, 
if available, in the first attempts at constructing outlines. 
When the main topics must be inferred through the 
association of groups of related ideas, outlining is quite 
another matter requiring keen thought and analysis. 
With judicious assistance by the teacher, however, it is 
not beyond the abilities of fifth-grade pupils. The chief 
elements of success in this line of work are, (i) intelligent 
selection of material, (2) careful study of the material by 
the teacher before presentation to the class, and (3) skill 
in presenting in order to lead the children to do most of the 
thinking. 

Collecting Materml as a Phase of Study 

From constructing outlines of single lessons in a textbook 
they should be gradually led to the still more difficult and 
profitable practice of selecting material on a given topic 
from several books or from other sources and of construct- 
ing an outline based on this material. In connection with 
this work they would learn to ,use reference books properly 
and easily, and also the indexes and tables of contents in 
other books. Very many pupils even in high school 
scarcely know that books have indexes, and they are very 
far from connecting them with any practical use in study- 
ing. It is a pitiful sight and a sad commentary on the 
intelligence and diligence of teachers to watch the average 
pupil try to refer to some particular topic in a book by 
turning the leaves one at a time and scanning each page 
for the needed thought instead of turning to the index and 
locating it in a few seconds. 

The ability to organize material gleaned from several 
sources is particularly important. This kind of work is 
demanded in colleges and in many high schools. Yet not 



272 STANDARDIZED TESTS 

a few high-school and college students appear absolutely 
helpless when called upon to do it. They go through 
books and magazine articles making copious notes, or 
rather copying verbatim sentences and paragraphs that 
seem to pertain to their topic. This can scarcely be called 
note-taking. Then they connect these scraps together 
with a superabundance of conjunctions without regard to 
organization, interject a few phrases and clauses to make 
smooth reading, and submit the result with a sigh of relief 
to the instructor. Too often they " get by " with this 
sort of work because so many of them are incapable of 
doing anything better. 

Outhnes constructed as practice exercises in supervised 
study should be utilized in composition work. Although 
many pupils in the Enghsh classes learn to turn out fairly 
good work in narrative style, most of them do not know 
what organization means as applied to expository composi- 
tion. Practice in this sort of work should begin in the 
upper grades of the elementary school in connection with 
supervised study and silent-reading work. Teachers are 
all too prone to declare that such work is beyond the 
capabilities of elementary pupils, when the real trouble is 
in neglect or in lack of teaching skill on the part of the 
teacher. Of course it is beyond them until they learn how 
to do it. So is most everything else. But how are they 
going to learn if they are not given a chance to practice 
under proper conditions. 

In this chapter I have tried to show that effective super- 
vised study is not a Utopian dream possible of realization 
only in the larger and wealthier school systems; but that it 
is practicable in any school system wherein the adminis- 
trators and teachers have the courage, the ambition, and 
the intelligence to attempt it. The fact that supervised 



SUPERVISED STUDY 273 

study, teaching how to study, and silent-reading drill are 
so closely related that drill in one, when properly con- 
ducted, serves in some measure for drill in the others, 
makes invalid any excuses for neglect of any of these 
highly important phases of school work on the ground of 
lack of time. 



INDEX 



Ability in reading, diflSculty of meas- 
uring, 159. 

Ability of teachers, how to measure, 14; 
factors in, 69. 

Agreement, factors producing lack of 
teachers, 18. 

Arithmetic, individual records in, 57; 
over-emphasis on, 44; sixth grade, 
paper, distribution of ratings by 
teachers, 17. 

Association, keeping the right order of, 
163. 

Average mentality, record of child of, 55. 

Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, 96, 100, 

103. 
Bolenius Readers, The, 201. 
Bonuses, to teachers, 81. 
Border-line cases, 107. 
Bright child, individual record of, 63, 

64. 
Bright pupils, identifying the, iii. 

Causes of general tendencies, search for, 
44. 

Cave Twins, The, Perkins, 215. 

Children, teaching how to study, 234. 

City systems, adaptation of intelligence 
tests to problems of, 112. 

Civics, reading material for upper grades, 
197. 

Class, record of, 68. 

Cleveland Survey Test, 59. 

Comparing methods, ways of, 84, 86, 91 . 

Conditions revealed by the use of stand- 
ardized tests, 39; effect upon meth- 
ods, 94. 

Content subjects, individual records in, 
62. 

Cooperation of teachers, how to secure, 
16. 

Courtis'' s Standard Practice Tests, 84, 86, 
87, 88. 

Current events, reading material for 
upper grades, 198. 



Dearborn test, 102. 

Democracy and Education, Dewey, 148. 

Diagnostic Language and Grammar Test, 
Charters, 61. 

Diagnostic value of tests, 57. 

Diflficulty of history questions, as deter- 
mined b}' judgment of teachers, 21. 

Difficulty in teaching silent reading to 
beginners, the first, 169. 

Diggers in the Earth, Tappan, 201. 

Division Scale, Woody, 54, 55. 

Dull child, individual record of, 65, 
66. 

Educational Tests and Measurements, 
Monroe, De Voss and Kelly, 12. 

Efficiency of methods, compared by 
standardized tests, 82. 

Efficiency of teachers, measuring, 69. 

Eliminating the variables, 83. 

England's Story, Tappan, 196. 

English, individual records in, 6r. 

English Organization Test, Greene, 43, 
46, 61. 

Equality, fallacy of the theory, 99. 

Errors of judgment by teachers, 98. 

Experiment in comparing methods, 86. 

Factors in efficiency of a teacher, sum- 
marized, 82. 

Factors in teaching ability, 69. 

Fair method of grading pupils, 9, ii. 

Fallacy, of satisfactory progress possible 
to all pupils, 98. 

Faulty judgment of pupils by teachers, 

97- 
First steps in teaching reading, 160. 
First words, teaching the, 162. 

Geography, reading material for upper 

grades, 196. 
Geography Scale. Hahn-Lackej', 55, 6r. 
Good habits of study, how to encourage, 

238. 
Grade I, initiatory steps in teaching 



276 



INDEX 



reading, i6o; kind of material needed 
for, 178. 

Grading, by mental ages and achieve- 
ment tests substantially the same, 
118; proposed plan of, in rural school, 
119. 

Grading pupils fairly and accurately, 10. 

Grading purposes, use of intelligence 
tests for, 30, 1 14. 

Graph card, devising a, 32; meaning of, 
33; described, 39, 54; tendencies 
shown by, 42; composite seventh 
grade, 42; composite fourth grade, 
44. 

Group Intelligence Scale, Otis, 37, 41, 47, 

73. 
Group intelligence tests, loi. 
Group, progress, record of, 67, 68. 

Eaggerty Reading Examination, extract 
from, 183. 

Haggerty tests, 102, 103. 

Handwriting, individual records in, 60. 

History paper, eighth grade, distribu- 
tion of ratings by teachers, 18. 

History questions, weights assigned ac- 
cording to teachers' judgments, 22; 
ranked by number of times missed on 
test, 24; summary of ranks and values, 

25- 

History, reading material for upper 

grades, 196. 
Bistory Test, Starch, 55. 
Eotne Life Around the World, Mirick 

and Holmes, 210. 
Hutchinson, Woods, Health Series, 196. 

Illustrated vocabulary, the, 167. 
Importance of developing efficient 

readers in the lower grades, 159. 
Improvement of silent reading, means 

to, 145- 
Inaccuracy of teachers' marks, general, 

17- 

Individual Graph-Record Card, Brooks, 

54. 
Individual Record, samples of, 34, 35, 

37, 40, 41, 55, 58. 
Intelligence Tests, practical uses for, 96. 
Intensive work, results of, 90. 
Investigation and readjustments, use of 



intelligence tests illustrated, 104, 105, 
107. 

Judgment of pupils by teachers, faulty, 
97. 

Literature, reading material for upper 
grades, 197; why not adapted for 
silent-reading drill, 199. 

Lower grades, reading the most funda- 
mental subject taught in, 159. 

Manners and conduct, reading material 

for upper grades, 197. 
Marking, finding a satisfactory system 

of, 13. 
Marks, general inaccuraQr of teachers, 

17. 
Material, collecting, 271. 
Measuring the Results of Teaching, Mon- 
roe, 12, 19. 
Measuring teaching ability by results, 

69. 
Measurement of Intelligence, The, Ter- 

man, 96. 
Measurement of pupils, more reliable 

than teachers' judgment, 98. 
Mechanics of oral reading, a hindrance 

to proper reading habits, 148. 
Median score, 26. 
Mental ages, and intelligence quotients, 

102, 104, 106, 107, III, 114, 116, 118, 

121-23. 
Mental attitude, teacher's, 92. 
Method vs. Teacher, 82. 
Methods, compared by standardized 

tests, 82, 84, 86, 91 ; in teaching how to 

study, 236; in teaching silent reading, 

Grade 1, 172, 174, 175; new vs. old, 93; 

ways of comparing, 84, 86, 93. 
Modification of methods and materials, 

part of a testing program, 143. 
Moron, the high-grade, 109. 
Multiplication Scale, Woody, 31. 

Need of intelligence tests in judging 
pupils, 97. 

Objections of teachers to rating by re- 
sults, 72. 
Objective measurement, need of, 98. j 



INDEX 



277 



Observation of teachers by superintend- 
ent, not a fair way to estimate abil- 
ity, 14. 

Oral quizzes, 50. 

Oral readings, the case against, 150; not 
necessary, for beginners, 152; the 
proper time to begin, 154; the value 
of, 151. 

Oral-reading drill, 144, 146, 148. 

Ordinary tests unfair for grading pur- 
poses, II. 

Otis Group Intelligence Test, 102, 103. 

Our European Ancestors, Tappan, 196. 

Outlines, construction of, 265. 

Over-emphasis upon arithmetic, 44. 

Paragraph topic, finding a, 262. 

Passing mark, 26. 

Personal judgment vs. objective meas- 
urement, 98. 

Physiology and Hygiene, reading mate- 
rial for upper grades, 196. 

Pictures, the use of, 167. 

Plan, for comparing teacher's work 
under new methods, 93; for teaching 
silent reading, an effective, 160. 

Practical notes, upon use of intelligence 
tests, 96. 

Primers and first readers, comment 
upon, 170. 

Problems of city superintendents, how 
standardized tests can help, 112. 

Program of studies, as a guide for pro- 
motion purposes, 13. 

Progress, general, individual records in, 
62; of pupils, measuring, 12, 52. 

Punctuation Scale, Starch, 61. 

Pupils, grading the, 36; how to measure 
progress of, 12. 

Pupils' opinions of standardized tests, 
134-42. 

Question Method, the, 253, 254-57. 
Questions in history, ranked according 
to difficulty, 20. 

Rating teachers, plan for, 73, 76, 77, 78; 

intelligence tests used in, no. 
Reaction of teachers and pupils to 

standardized tests, 124. 
Reading Aims and Aiethods, 143. 



Reading, as a separate subject, in the 
upper grades, 193; causes of poor re- 
sults in, 49; new policy in, 50; individ- 
ual records in, 56; material, types for 
upper grades, 196; scores of fifth grade 
in, 75- 

Reasoning Test in Arithmetic, Monroe, 
59- 

Results, as the measure of teaching 
ability, 69; need of testing methods 
by, 94; of Mental Tests in a selected 
school, 120. 

Retarded children, 109. 

Riverside Primer, Tlte, 185. 

Rural school, proposed plan of grading 
in, 119. 

Safeguarding tests fronj pupils, im- 
portance of, 29. 

Salary and rating, 80. 

Schedule of silent reading for upper 
grades, 195. 

Science of Everyday Life, The, Van Bus- 
kirk and Smith, 219. 

Scores, converted into grades, 31. 

Second grade, reading in the, 186. 

Second Readers, comment upon, 176. 

Sentences, teaching, 165. 

Silent reading, ability not ensured by 
drill in oral reading, 144; criticism of 
current methods of teaching, 157; 
effective plan for teaching, 160; good 
selections and directions for use, 202- 
29; how good methods encourage good 
study habits, 240, 244; in the lower 
grades, 159; kind of material needed 
for, 200; methods actually used, 156; 
schedule for upper grades, 195; why it 
should be taught first, 155. 

Silent-reading ability, essential to study, 

239- 
Silent-reading drill, an opportunity for 

supervised study, 250. 

Silent-reading material, ways of using, 
230. 

Silent-Reading Test, Courtis, 131 ; Mon- 
roe, 54, 160. 

Special reading classes for the upper 
grades, how organized, 194. 

Special teaching methods, relative 
values of, 83. 



278 



INDEX 



Spelling, individual records in, 60. 

Spelling Scale, Ayres, 55, 60. 

Standardized test, used to measure 
progress, 53; opinion of teachers and 
pupils, 126-42. 

Story of the Greek People, Tappan, 196. 

Story of the Roman People, Tappan, 196, 
222. 

Study, teaching children to, 15, 234. 

Supervised study, 244, 246, 262; alter- 
nated with recitation, 259; diflBculties 
in connection with, 247; practical 
method of, 15. 

Teacher vs. Method, 82. 

Teachers, how to measure ability of, 14. 

Teachers' judgments of progress un- 
satisfactory, 52. 

Teachers' opinion of standardized tests, 
126-34. 

Teachers' tests as written reviews, 27. 

Teaching ability, factors in, 69. 

Teaching how to study, practical method 
of, 15. 

Teaching methods, relative values of, 83. 

Tendencies shown by the graphs, 42. 

Test, in history, 23. 

Testing-methods by results, need of, 94. 



Testing, supervising the, 30. 
Third Grade, reading in the, 190. 
Time Hmit, necessity for, 28. 
Timing, need of accurate, 27. 
Trees, Stars and Birds, Moseley, 253. 

United Slates, The, Winslow, 224. 
Unjust blame of teachers, 108. 
Upper grades, reading in the, 193. 
Usable material in primers and first 
readers, 171. 

Values, of teaching methods, relative, 

83. 
Variables, eliminating the, 83. 
Visual Vocabulary, Thorndike, 49, 62. 
Vocabulary building, 51. 
Vocabulary, the illustrated, 167. 

War with Germany, iniSuence in devel- 
opment of group intelligence tests, 

lOI. 

Ways of using reading material in the 
lowest grades, 172, 174, 175; silent 
reading material, 230. 

Woody Scales, for measuring ability of 
pupils, 88, 89. 

Writing, the situation in, 47. 



